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POEMS. 



FREDERICK GODDARD TUCKERMAN. 



'^ 




BOSTON: 
TICKNOR AND FIELDS 

1864. 



75 d\'^ 



1^ 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the j'ear 1864, by 

FHKDERICK G. TUCKEKMAX, 

in the Clerlv's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



X f (c'l I 



These Poems loere first collected and printed in 1860. 



CONTENTS. 



PART I. 



November . 

April .... 

May Flowers . 

Hymn for a Dedication 

Inspiration 

Infatua-tion . 

Sonnet 

PiCOMEGAN 

The Superlative 
Sonnet I. . . . 
Sonnet II. . 
The Question 
Twilight . 
Elidore .... 
The Clearing . 
To the River 



Page 

3 

4 
10 
12 
15 

17 
18 
24 
26 
27 
28 
34 
40 
43 
48 



PART II. 

A Soul that out of Nature's Deep 
The Stranger ..... 



55 
77 



IV CONTENTS. 

The School-girl : an Idyll 86 

A Sample of Coffee Beans 94 

A Latter-Dat Saint 106 

Anybody's Critic 109 

Rhotruda 112 

CORALIE 121 

I TOOK from its Glass . . . . . .123 

As SOMETIMES IN A GrOVE 124 

Mark Atherton 135 

Sidney 148 

Refrigerium 153 

The Old Beggar 155 

Paulo to Francesca 158 

When the Dim Day 161 

Hymn to the Virgin 165 

Translation 166 

Margites 167 

Sonnets. Part 1 171 

Sonnets. Part II 199 



POEMS. 



PAET L 



^QVtmh^r< 



Oh ! who is there of us that has not felt 
The sad decadence of the failing year, 
And marked the lesson still with grief and fear 
Writ in the rolled leaf, and widely dealt ? 
When now no longer burns yon woodland belt 
Bright with disease ; no tree in glowing death 
Leans forth a cheek of flame to fade and melt 
In the warm current of the west wind's breath ; 

1-1 



2 l^TOVEMBEK. 

Nor yet tlirougli low blue mist, on slope and plain, 
Droops the red sunlight in a dream of day ; 
But, from that lull, the winds of change have burst 
And dashed the drowsy leaf with shattering rain. 
And swung the groves, and roared, and wreaked 

their worst. 
Till all the world is harsh, and cold, and gray. 



^ p II H* 



The first of April ! jet November's haze 

Hangs on the wood, and blurs the bill's blue tip : 

The light of noon rests wanly on the strip 

Of sandy road ; recalling leaf-laid ways, 

Shades stilled in death, and tender twilight days 

Ere Winter lifts the wind-trump to his lip. 

No moss is shyly seen a tuft to raise, 

Nor under grass a gold-eyed flower to dip ; 

Nor sound is breathed, but haply the south-west 

Faint rippling in the brushes of the pine, 

Or of the shrunken leaf, dry-fluttering. 

Compact the village lies, a whitened line 

Gathered in smoke. What holds this brooding 

rest? 
Is it dead Autumn ? or the dreaming Spring ? 

1--2 



Pag (^toiucrs. 



Where the dwarf pine reddens 

The rocks and soil with its rusted leaves 

And skeleton cones ; 

And the footstep deadens, 
As it clamhers o'er roots and broken stones ; 
While a noise of waves the ear deceives 
As the sigh of the wind through the foliage heaves, 

And the restless heart saddens 

With the surging tones ; 
Where falls no change 
From the best and brightest of spring-tide hours, 
And the children of Summer their gifts estrange, 

When dashing with flowers 
Lowland, and upland, and craggy range : — 



MAY FLO WEES. 

There, where Decay and chilled Life stared together 

Forlornly round ; 
In an April day of wilful weather, 
The hidden Spring I found. 



Ere the Month, in bays and hollows, 
Strung with leaves the alder spray, 

Or with bloom, on river- shallows. 
Dropped the wands of willows gray ; 

Ere her fingers flung the cowslip 
Golden through the meadow-glade. 

Or the bloodroot's caps of silver 

Flickered where her feet had played ; 

AYhilst above the bluffs were hiding 
Sullen brows in slouching snows, — 

Through the leaves my footstep sliding 
Fell w^here hers first touched and rose. 



MAY FLOWERS. 

Underneath the dead pme-droppings, 

Breaking white through mildewed mould, 

Gleamed a rosy chain of flowerets, — 
Rosy flowerets, fresh and cold : 



Swept not, but by shadow swaying 

Of wild branch in windy air. 
Couched the buds, unguessed, and laying 

Star to star, in darkness there. 



Eagerly, yet half reluctant. 
As the daylight lit on them, 

Of its clinging tufts of odour 
Quick I stript the trailing stem ; 



And their lights in cluster blending,- 
Barren sounds and damp decays 

Sank, in sighs of Summer ending 
And a smell of balmy days. 



MAY FLOWERS. 

So refreshed and fancy-solaced, 
Through the Shadow on I past ; 

While Life seemed to beat and kindle 
In the breath my darlings cast. 



As I parted from the pine-trees, 
Gathering in, as round a grave 

Mourners close ; — above their branches, 
From a glimmering western cave. 



Sunlight broke into the valley ; 

Filling with an instant glow 
All its basin, from the brook-bed 

To the dark edge touched with snow 



And, by luring sweet, and lustre. 
Summoned from his rock or tree. 

Heavily, round leaf and cluster, 
Hurtled the bewildered bee. 



MAY FLOWERS. 

So, until I found the village, 
Welcome brightened in the air, — 

Where, from porch and vine-filled window, 
Beamed a welcome still more fair, — 



Girlish heads, half-seen, and glancing. 
Peeped athrough the leaf-lorn bowers ; 

And the little children, dancing. 

Clapped their hands, and cried, "Mayflowers ! 



Since I found that buried garland, 
Fair, and fresh, and rosy-cold. 

All has been its life foreshadowed, — 
Woods in umbrage banked and rolled. 



MAY FLOWERS. 

Meadows brimmed with clover, ridges 
Where through fern the lupine crowds, 

And upon the sandstone ledges 
Laurel heaped like sunset clouds : 



But the wayward mind, regretful, 
Wanders through that April day, 

And, by fields for ever faded. 
Seems to tread a vanished way. 



Till it finds those low lights flushing 

Through the pine-trees' mouldered spines, 

And hears still the mournful gushing 
Of the north wind in the pines. 



10 



Igmn fox ih §diaim xif a ^mi^tcrm 



Beside the Elver's dark green flow — 
Here, where the pine-trees weep, 

Ked Autumn's winds will coldly blow 
Above their dreamless sleep ; 



Their sleep, for whom with prayerful breath 

"We've put apart to-day, 
This spot, — for shadowed walks of Death, 

And gardens of Decay. 



This crumbling bank with Autumn crowned. 

These pining woodland ways. 
Seem now no longer common ground ; 

But each in turn conveys 



HYMN FOR A DEDICATION. U 

A saddened sense of something more : 

Is it the dying year ? 
Or a dim shadow, sent before, 

Of the next gathering here ? 



Is it that He, the silent Power, 
Has now assumed the place, 

And drunk the light of Morning's hour, 
The life of Nature's grace ? 



Not so : the spot is beautiful. 

And holy is the sod ; 
'Tis we are faint, our eyes are dull ; 

All else is fair in God. 



So let them lie, their graves bedecked. 
Whose bones these shades invest. 

Nor grief deny, nor fear suspect. 
The beauty of their rest. 



12 



Jnspiratitrju 



The common paths by which we walk and wind 
Unheedful, but perhaps to wish them done, 
Though edged with brier and clotbur, bear behind 
Such leaves as Milton wears, or Shakspeare won. 
Still could we look with clear poetic faith, 
No day so desert but a footway hath, 
Which still explored, though dimly traced it turn, 
May yet arrive where gates of glory burn ; 
Nay, scarce an hour, of all the shining twelve. 
But to the inmost sight may ope a valve 
On those hid gardens, where the great of old 
Walked from the world, and their sick hearts con- 
soled 
Mid bowers that fall not, wells which never waste. 
And gathered flowers, the fruit whereof we taste : 



INSPIRATION. 13 

While, of the silent hours that mourn the day, 
Not one but bears a poet's crown away ; 
Regardless, or unconscious, how he might 
Collect an import from the fires of night. 
Which, when the hand is still, and fixed the head, 
Shall tremble, starlike, o'er the undying dead ; 

And, with a tearful glory. 

Through the darkness shadowing then. 
Still light the sleeper's story. 

In the memories of men. 

And such are mine ; for me these scenes decay, — 

For me, in hues of change, are ever born : 

The faded crimson of a wasted day, 

The gold and purple braveries of the Morn ; 

The life of Spring, the strength that Summer gains. 

The dying foliage sad September stains ; 

By latter Autumn shattered on the plain, 

Massed by the wind, blent by the rotting rain ; 

Till belts of snow from cliff to cliff appear, 

And whitely link the dead and new-born year. 



14 INSPIEATION. 

All these, to music deep, for me unfold, 

Yet vaguely die : their sense I cannot hold, — 

But shudder darkly as the years drop by 

And leave me, lifting still a darkened eye. 

Or if from these despondingly I go 

To look for light where clear examples glow. 

Though names constellate glitter overhead. 

To prompt the path, and guide the failing tread, 

I linger, watching for a warmer gleam. 

While still my spirit shivers, and I seem 

Like one constrained to wander 

Alone, till morning light. 
Beneath the hopeless grandeur 

Of a star-filled winter's night. 



15 



JnfatuattDn. 



'Tis his one hope : all else that round his life 
So fairly circles, scarce he numbers now. 
The pride of name, a lot with blessings rife. 
Determined friends, great gifts that him endow. 
Are shrunk to nothing in a woman's smile : 
Counsel, reproof, entreaty, all are lost. 
Like windy waters which their strength exhaust, 
;And leave no impress ; worldly lips revile 
With sneer and stinging gibe ; but idly by, 
Unfelt, unheard, the impatient arrows fly. 
Careless, he joins a parasitic train, — 
Fops, fools, and flatterers, whom her arts enchain, 
Nor counts aught base that may to her pertain. 



16 IKFATUATION. 

Immersed in love, or what he deems is such, 
The present exigence he looks to please. 
Nor seeks beyond ; but only strives to clutch 
That which will goad his heart, but ne'er can ease : 
So the drenched sailor, wrecked in Indian seas, 
To some low reef of wounding coral chngs 
Mid slav'ry weed, and drift, and ocean scurf ; 
Yet heedeth not companionship of these. 
But strains his quivering grasp, and stoutly swings. 
Despite of Hfting swell and flinging surf. 



^0nn^t 



Again, again, ye part in stormy grief 
From these bare liills, and bowers so built in vain. 
And lips and hearts that will not move again, — 
Pathetic Autumn, and the writhled leaf; 
Dropping away in tears with warning brief : 
The wind reiterates a wailful strain. 
And on the skylight beats the restless rain. 
And vapour drowns the mountain, base and brow. 
I watch the wet black roofs through mist defined, 
I watch the raindrops strung along the blind, 
And my heart bleeds, and all my senses bow 
In grief ; as one mild face, with suffering lined, 
Comes up in thought : oh, wildly, rain and wind, 
Mourn on ! she sleeps, nor heeds your angry sor- 
row now. 

2 



§tr0m^jgaiu 



Staes of gold tlie green sod fretting, 
Clematis the thicket netting, 
Silvery moss her locks down-letting 

Like a maiden brave : 
Arrowhead his dark flag wetting 

In thy darker wave. 

By the River's broken border 
Wading through the ferns. 

When a darker deep, and broader, 
Fills its bays and turns ; 

Up along the winding ridges, 

Down the sudden-dropped descent, 



PICOMEGAN. 19 

Kounding pools with reedy edges, 

Silent coves in alders pent, — 
Through the river-flags and sedges 

Dreamily I went. 

Dreamily, for perfect Summer 

Hushed the vales with misty heat ; 
In the wood, a drowsy drummer. 

The woodpecker, faintly beat ; 
Songs were silent, save the voices 

Of the mountain and the flood. 
Save the wisdom of the voices 

Only known in sohtude : 
But to me, a lonely Kver, 

All that fading afternoon 
From the undermining river 

Came a burden in its tune ; — 
Came a tone my ear remembers. 

And I said, " What grief thee grieves, 
Pacing through thy leafy chambers, 

And thy voice of rest bereaves ? 

2—2 



20 PICOMEGAN. 

Winds of change that wail and hluster, 

Sunless morns, and shivering eves, 
Carry sweets to thee belonging, — 

All of light thy rim receives ; 
River-growths that fold and cluster, 

Following where the waters lead, 
Bunches of the purple aster. 

Mints, and blood-dropped jewel-weed, 
Like carnelians hanging 

' Mid their pale-green leaves : 
Wherefore then, with sunlight heaping 

Perfect joy and promised good, 
When thy flow should pulse in keeping 

With the beating of the blood. 
Through thy dim green shadows sweeping, 
When the folded heart is sleeping, 

Dost thou mourn and brood ? " 

Wider, wilder, round the headland, 

Black the River swung. 
Over skirt and hanging woodland 

Deeper stillness hung, 



PICOMEGAN. 21 

As once more I stood a dreamer 

The waste weeds among. 
Doubt, and pain, and grief extremer, 

Seemed to fall away : 
But a dim voluptuous sorrow 
Smote and thrilled my fancy thoro', 

Gazing over bend and bay ; 
Saying, " Thou, mournful Kiver ! 

As of old dost wind and waste ; 
Falling down the reef for ever. 

Rustling with a sound of haste 
Through the dry-fringed meadow-bottom ; 

But my hands, aside thy bed, 
Gather now no gems of Autumn, 

Or the dainties Summer shed : 
By the margin hoarsely flomng, 
Yellow-dock and garget growing, 
Drifts of wreck, and muddy stain, 
By river-wash, and dregs of rain. 
Yet, though bound in desolation, 

Bound and locked, thy waters pour, 
With a cry of exultation 



22 PICOMEGAN. 

Uncontained by shore and shore ; 
With a booming, deep vibration, 

In its wind my cheek is wet, — 
But, unheeding woe or warning, 

Thou through all the barren hours 

Seem'st to sing of Summer yet ; 
Thou, with voice all sorrow scorning, 

Babblest on of leaves and flowers 
Wearily, whilst I go mourning 

O'er thy fallen banks and bowers ; 
O'er a life small grace adorning, 

With lost aims, and broken powers 
Wreck-flung, like these wave -torn beaches. 

Tear-trenched, as by winter showers. 
But a faith thy music teaches. 

Might I to its knowledge climb, 
Still the yearning heart beseeches 

Truth ; as when in summer time 
Through these dells I vaguely sought her. 

In the dreamy summer time." 
So the margin paths and reaches 

Once again I left to roam. 



PICOMEGAN. 23 

Left behind the roaring water, 

Eddy-knots, and clots of foam ; 
But it still disturbed me ever. 

As a dream no reason yields, 
From the ruin of the river, 

Winding up through empty fields. 
That I could not gather something 

Of the meaning and belief. 
In the voice of its triumphing, 

Or the wisdom of its grief. 



24 



Wlx^ ^u]ft\{Uiive. 



How strange a paradox is human life ! — 
Strange in repose, yet stranger in its strife ; 
A walking dream, or fierce and barren toil : 
A shifting fixture, an enduring change ; 
Tempting, to baffle, — promising, to foil. 
Strange in the garnered sum, and in the instance 
strange. 

Strange, that a man, whose soul the earthquake - 

throb 
Of Genius, like a buried Titan's sob, 
Has lifted into stillness and sunshine. 
Should, amid sordid fogs, and earthly jars 
That beat about his base, again decline. 
In place of gazing heaven, and striking to the 

stars ! 



THE SUPERLATIVE. 25 

Stranger, that Woman, clad in sanctity 
Of gentleness and love, with modesty 
To guard her vesture Hke a golden zone, 
Should rend away her rohes, and shameless stand 
In the world's eye ; a wrangler, to disown 
Her sex, and make it monstrous in an outraged 
land! 

But strangest still, of these, or aught beside 

Of human crime or folly, is the pride 

Born of the gentlest gift we reach from Heaven ; 

Where hearts like these, stung by its bitterness. 

Cease from each other, wild to be forgiven. 

Yet proud to nurse an unrelenting wretchedness ! 



26 



^ i) nn^t s 



I. 

The starry flower, the flower-like stars that fade 
And brighten with the daylight and the dark, — 
The bluet in the green I faintly mark, 
And glimmering crags with laurel overlaid, 
Even to the Lord of light, the Lamp of shade. 
Shine one to me, — the least, still glorious made 
As crowned moon, or heaven's great hierarch. 
And, so, dim grassy flower, and night-lit spark. 
Still move me on and upward for the True ; 
Seeking through change, growth, death, in new 

and old. 
The full in few, the statelier in the less, 
With patient pain ; always remembering this, — 
His hand, who touched the sod with showers of gold. 
Stippled Orion on the midnight blue. 



SONNETS. 



II. 

And so, as this great sphere (now turning slow 
Up to the light from that abyss of stars, 
Now wheehng into gloom through sunset bars) — 
With all its elements of form and flow, 
And life in life ; where crowned, yet blind, must go 
The sensible king, — is but a Unity 
Compressed of motes impossible to know ; 
Which worldlike yet in deep analogy. 
Have distance, march, dimension, and degree ; 
So the round earth — which we the world do call — 
Is but a grain in that that mightiest swells. 
Whereof the stars of light are particles. 
As ultimate atoms of one infinite Ball, 
On which God moves, and treads beneath his feet 
the All ! 



28 



i^h^ ^nt^txow. 



How shall I array my love ? 
How should I arrange my fair ? 
Leave her standing white and silent 
In the richness of her hair ? 
Motion silent, beauty bare 
In the glory of her hair ? 
Or, for place and drapery, 
Ravage land, and sack the sea ? 

Or from darkest summer sky. 
When the white belts, riding high. 
Cut the clear like ribs of pearl, 
On the eastern upland's curl. 
In the time of dusk and dew 
Tear away a breadth of blue ? 



THE QUESTION. 29 

Touched from t^-iliglit's rosy bars, 
With each twinkling tuft of stars, 
And, shaking out the gHnts of gold, 
Catch her softly from the cold ? — 
Catch, and lift her to the cloud, 
Where to crown her, passing proud. 
Gliding, glistening woods of June, 
Beach the rain-ring from the moon ? 

Or — to fold her warmer-wise — 
Let me try, in garb and guise 
Gathered from this mortal globe ; 
Eoll her beauty in a robe 
Of the Persian lilach stain. 
Purple, dim with filigrane ; 
Belted-in with rarer red 
Than India's leaf ere figured. 
Put a crown upon her head ! 
Then to lead her, high and cold. 
Where, from a step of silver rolled 
A crimson floweth on the floor ; 
Like a river riding o'er 



30 THE QUESTION. 

Pearl, and priceless marbles bright, — 

Onyx, myrrhine, marcasite. 

And jasper green ! — nor these alone, 

But the famed Phengites stone, — 

And leading upward to the throne. 

Prop and pillar, roof and rise. 

All ashake with drops and dyes, 

And the diamond's precious eyes ; 

And she, as if a sudden storm 

Had fallen upon her face and form ; 

Diamonds like raindrops rare. 

Pearls like hailstones in her hair ; 

In the lamplight's ruddy stream. 

Jewels crossed with jewels gleam 

On jewels, jewel-circled there ; 

While, round her wrists and ankles bare. 

Gems of jewels glimpse and gaze, — 

Hyacinth, rose-stone, idocrase. 

Or she stealeth, soft arrayed 
Like a white Hsemonian maid 
Winding under cypress shade ; 



THE QUESTION. 31 

Cedar shade, and paths of green, 
With porch and pillar, white between ; 
Amaranth eyes do mine behold, 
Hair like the pale marigold : 
Dreamily she seems to me 
Hero, or Herodice ! 
With a sidelong motion sweet, 
Thoro' flowers she draws her feet ; 
This way now the ripples come, — 
Shower myrtles, myrrh, and gum, 
With heliochryse and amomum ! 

Ah ! not so. New England's flower ! 
Separate must her beauty be 
From stars of old mythology, — 
Priestesses, or Crysophoras, 
Nor fairy garb, nor kingly dower. 
May fit her in her radiant hour ; 
Free and bold her steps must flow. 
All men see her come and go ; 
At her feet the planet lies, 
Day and night are in her eyes. 



32 THE QUESTION. 

Oyer her the star-flag strewn : 

Lo ! she standeth there alone, 

Pride, in her dark glances, king ! 

Love, her cheek rose-colouring ; 

In a garden all her own, 

Lo ! she standeth, crowned on 

With rare roses, round her drawn 

Texture like the wehs of dawn 

On the rose-heds lingering. 

While my heart to her I bring ; 

Heart and garden all her own — 

What, in truth, cares such a one. 

Though my arm could round her throw 

Gleam of gods, or crowns bestow? 

Or though the old gods could confer 

All godlike gifts and grace on her ? 

The young Medusa's locks divine, 

Pelops' shoulder eburnine, 

Lips that drew the Ismenean bees, 

Tears of the Heliades, 

Dropped into shimmering shells that be 

About the indraught of the sea. 



THE QUESTION. 33 

The river-riches of the sphere, 
All that the dark sea-hottoms bear, 
The T\ide earth's green convexity, 
The inexhaustible blue sky. 
Hold not a prize, so proud, so high. 
That it could grace her, gay or grand, 
By garden-gale and rose-breath fanned ; 
Or as to-night I saw her stand, 
Lovely in the meadow-land. 
With a clover in her hand. 



34 



iiiuilisiti* 



1. 

In the darkening silence, — 
When the hilltops dusk and fail, 
And the purple damps of evening now 
No longer edge the vale ; 
When the faint flesh-tinted clouds have parted 
To the westward, one by one, — 
In the glimmering silence, 
I love to steal alone 
By river and by runside. 
Through knots of aspens gray, 
And hearken for the voices 
Of a music ceased away. 

2. 

About the winding water. 
And among the bulrush-spears, 



TWILIGHT. 35 

Like the wind of empty Autumn, comes 
Their sorrow in my ears ; 
Like the wind, of hollow Autumn blowing 
From swamp and shallow^ dim, 
Comes the sorrow of the voices ; 
Whilst along the weedy brim 
I follow in the evenfall, 
And darkly reason why 
Those whispers breathe so mournfully 
From depths of days gone by. 

3. 

Is it that, in the stealing 
Of the tender, tearful tones, 
The knowledge stirs, that bowers and homes 
Are dust and fallen stones, 
^Yhere once they sang ? — that on lips so loving 
Settled a still gray sleep, 
With tears, though mindful memory 
Still brings them from the deep ? 
Is it that Conscience muses, 
** 'Twas for thee their high hearts heaved ? " 

3—2 



36 TWILIGHT. 

Or is it so, that I am not 

What those best hearts believed ? 

4. 

falling stream ! voices ! 

grief ! gaining night ! 

Ye bring no comfort to the heart : 
Ye but again unite 
In a brooding gloom, and a windy wail ; 
And a sorrow, cold like Death, 
Steals from the river-border. 
Falls in the dampening breath 
Of the unavailing night-wind, — 
Falls with the strength of tears. 
And an unreal bitterness, 
On the life of latter years. 

5. 

1 see the flags of the Eiver, 
And the moss-green alder bark, 

While faintly the far-set village lights 
Flash through the rainy dark ; 



TWILIGHT. 37 

And the \\illow drops to the dipping water, — 
But why, from shelf and shore, 
Comes the trouble of the voices 
Of the loved of heretofore ? 
They never knew these shadows, 
And the river's sighing flow 
Swept not their ears in those dim days, 
Nor lulled them long ago. 



Sunk are the ships, or shattered, — 
Yet, as 'mid the burying foam. 
On the wild sea-bar, beat here and there, 
As the surges go and come. 
Pieces and parts of a broken vessel ; 
So, to this stranger stream 
And its still woods, come drifting in. 
Thought, memor}^, doubt, and dream, 
Of the noble hearts that sailed with me : 
Here to this desert spot 
Come their dim ghosts, where they, indeed. 
Were known and nurtured not. 



38 TWILIGHT. 

7. 
'Tis the heart, the heart, rememhers, 
And with wild and passionate will 
Peoples the woods and vales, and pours 
Its cry round stream and hill. 
I look o'er the hills to the mournful morning, 
And it whispers still of home, — 
And, in the darkening of the day, 
Impels me forth to roam. 
With a desolate and vague desire, 
Like the evil spirit's quest ; 
Who walketh through dry places, 
Seeldng still, nor finding rest. 

8. 

Yet, in the gathering silence, 
When the hilltops faint and fail. 
And the tearful tints of twilight now 
No longer edge the vale ; 
When the crimson-faded clouds have parted 
To the westward, one by one, — 
In the passionate silence, 



TWILIGHT. 39 



I love to steal alone 
By river and by runside, 
Through knots of aspens gray, 
And hearken for the voices 
Of a music ceased away. 



40 



IxAoiie. 



Her beauty came to his distrustful heart 
As comes a bud to flower, in bracing air ; 
For its perception had been dulled to sleep, 
By disappointment, doubt, and worldly wear, 
The fear of wrong, and coldness everywhere : 
Yet, while unguessed, an impulse seemed to part 
From that pale presence ; calling him to keep 
A watch on Beauty's beamings, powers, and tones, — 
From blossoming dawn, down to the half-filled 

flower. 
Or bird, or buried brook : all that Life owns. 
Or Nature gives, grew holier in that power. 

An influence still entreating day by day, 
Yet still unlike the tricks of female guile, 
Not forward, but to reach and reconcile 
Through childlike grace and plain sincerity ; 



ELIDORE. 41 

And teaching liim, by such innocence of display, 

That light of outward loveliness to see. 

Scarce felt at first, with Time's increasing worth 

The faint eyes deepened, and the lips awoke. 

Till, from a clouded brow, .all beauty broke. 

And bade him own a wonder of the earth, — 

A graceful mind, most gracefully inclosed ; 

A woman fair and young, but softly free 

From the w^orld's msdom, and hypocrisy ; 

Or restless spite, or curiosity ; 

Gentle and glad, yet armed in constancy, 

With breathings heavenward, and a faith composed. 

Such is the Beauty dowered not to deceive ; 
Such teas the Beauty that dispersed his fear. 
And smiled, and said, " world-sick hearty be- 
lieve ! " 
Doubting, he saw all doubts and bodings gTim, 
Like night dissohing, break and disappear. 
While Joy and Trust relumed his vision dim ; 
Such Joy as clears the w^ood-lost wanderer's sight. 
Who, pushing darkly on, with body bowed, 



42 ELLDORE. 

Through trunks and brush discerns a peering light, 
And sees it shine, a star of safety soon ; 
Or like a stormy moonrise, when the moon 
Grows from some blackened ridge of thundercloud, 
And slow perfects herself in wondering eyes 
That brighten with her round : so sweet surprise 
Brightened his look, as that strange beauty beamed 
To illume a heart, that had its grace, its power, 
misdeemed. 



43 



Here, wliere the Kiver wheels 

Thi'ough counties called the midland, 
Of this fair tract the flower and crown, 

Once stood a mid of woodland : 
But now no belt of brown. 

Beech, alder, ash, or oaken, 
Is left; and Autumn's Lamp reveals 

All barren, bald, and broken. 

A slope of rugged marl, 

For copse and dreamy dingle, 
The larches burned, the birches flayed, 

Or gone for beam and shingle ; 
The beeches in whose shade 

The hunter shaped his paddle. 
With scrawly bush and brushwood-snarl, 

Have vanished, stock and staddle. 



44 THE CLEARING. 

Beside tlie Run whose flow 

The season touched with flowers, 
Or softly staunched with fallen leaves,- 

Or fed with perfumed showers, 
A shirt with tattered sleeves 

Slaps in the gust of summer, 
And, vaguely, soapy breathings blow 

Across the vagrant roamer. 

Here, where the golden grace 

Of moonlight fell in shatters. 
By dark, a dingy, flickering line 

Frets on the tossing waters ; 
For here, where then the pine 

Tanned with his droppings scanty. 
This rock, the Poet's resting-place. 

Is propt, an Irish shanty. 

Oh ! not upon the edge 
Of grove, or ranging river, 

At eve, or in the general day 
Where'er thy steps endeavour. 



THE CLEARING. 45 

Shall tliee such rest delay, — 

di-eamer in the Shadow ! 
By axe and beetle, blast and wedge. 

Now torn from marge and meadow. 

Thou, whom no sorrow sears, 

Nor sour mischances harden. 
Wilt seek no more the pitcher-plant 

To deck thy slender garden. 
In this thy holy haunt : 

Gone are the happy bowers ! 
And thou, apart, in other years 

Must rove for other flowers. 

The Spring wind will not come 

Now like a pleasant rumour. 
Nor the long hot song of harvest-fly 

To sting the ear of Summer ; 
And when the woods are dry, 

Or red with Autumn's dawning, 
This bay will miss a music from 

Dim arch, or crimson awning. 



46 THE CLEARING. 

Yet when November rains 

Shall settle on the forest, 
And wash the colour from the wood, 

His darlings from the florist, 
'Twill seem a glimpse of good ; 

A compensation tender, — 
Remembering that to this remains 

No beauty now to render ; 

And that — for what we love. 

Though doubt. and dread benumb us,— 
The gracious Past, the yielded boon, 

Can ne'er be taken from us. 
Then let us hold what's gone. 

And hug each greener minute. 
Though shanties smoke in every cove. 

And Paddies rule the senate. 

Yes, though for belt and bower 
The hard, dry tangle bristles, 

And the bloomy hollows swarm and burn 
"With tick-seed, tares, and thistles. 



THE CLEARING. 47 

And the Eiver runs forlorn, — 

We go not unrequited, 
Whilst memory glasses heaven and flower, 

Wherein our love delighted. 

And may this Picture gay, 

Deep-rooted in my hosom. 
The blue above for ever seal. 

For ever shade the blossom ; 
Unswept by worldly steel, 

Or Sorrow's fire and powder. 
Give lordlier off the limb, and sway 

The surgy summit prouder ! 

But if, through bough and butt, 

Time's dull steel chops and craunches. 
And lumber lies for noble stems. 

And ^n-eck for wreathing branches. 
And all the glory dims, — 

May I, for deep -loved Nature, 
Though brute his being, and base his hut, 

Replace it with the Creature ! 



48 



®0 tlU %XVf^X. 

'Tis nearly night, — a healing night, 

As Carro's words last-spoken, 
" And will the day he blue and bright ? 

A whole bright day, unbroken ? " 
You ask of me, who walk to learn ; 

Regardless wealth amassing, 
And take no charge of tide or turn, 

And scarcely keep, in passing, 

A watch on wind and weather-gleam, — 

Of these things no recorder ; 
Yet o'er the dark I almost seem 

To see its golden border. 
Behind the night is hid the day : 

I cannot find the reason 
In rule or rhyme ; but all things say 

'Twill be a day of season. 



TO THE RIVER. 49 

And CaiTO, too, will softer smile, 

And Carro's frown be rarer, 
But leave your fair a little while, — 

You'll find her all the fairer, — 
To walk with me ; not by the road, 

(A little breathing give her,) 
And we will keep the winding wood 

Until we strike the Eiver. 

And I will tell, where Love, though loath, 

A fuller harvest heapeth 
Than yours : yet I have known the growth. 

And followed where he reapeth ; 
And this, though now to heaven you cast, 

Appealing, death-defiant, 
A passion pitiless and vast 

As love of god or giant ! 

For one is beat with blasting tears. 
And burned with raging weather. 

And reapt in fiery haste, — the ears 
Half-ripe, dead-ripe, or neither : 

4 



50 TO THE RIVEK. 

The other hangs with dim rain prest. 
All greenly wet, and groweth 

For ever in the realms of rest, 
Nor end nor seedtime knoweth. 

Yet some, who cannot help to see, 

Kefuse the day, and many, 
Where faintest strokes of sunlight be, 

Peep hard for pin and penny, 
Who sneer at what the meadow spreads, 

And what the woods environ ; 
And, like the sons of Use, with heads. 

And hands, and feet of iron, 

Would grasp the Titan's scythe to wound ; 

To sweep the hill asunder, 
And shear the groves at one swing-round, 

And tread the Muses under ! 
Yet, still best-pleased amid the roar, 

I find myself a debtor, 
Love men not lesser than before. 

And Nature more than better. 



TO THE RIVER. 51 

There be, with brains no folding shroud 

Of grief, can wean or widow 
Of vacant mirth, who bear the cloud, 

Yet shrink from shade of shadow ; 
Would flit for ever in the shine, 

Despite of burns and blisters. 
And add another to the Nine, 

More foolish than her sisters : 

A denary of graceful girls. 

That carol, dance, and sidle 
Through chaffering crowds, and giddying whirls 

Of Life, all loud and idle. 
But I, who love the graver Muse, 

And Minna more than Brenda, 
Walk not with these, nor find my \iews 

Writ down in their credenda. 

Why, for some peep of meaning clear. 

Should we ourselves deliver 
Up to the stream, which even here 

Koars past us like a River ? 

4—2 



52 TO THE RIVER. 

But bencl, and let the hurly pass, — 
Pedant and fop, chance -hitters ! 

Whilst, in the fields of faded grass. 
The cricket ticks and twitters ; — 

'With those that loose the languid page, 

Nor let the life o'erflow it, 
But pick and copy, sap and sage : 

Part wit, and parcel poet. 
They follow fast some empiric, 

Nor heed for watch or w^arden ; 
But go in crowds, and settle thick 

Like crows in Nature's garden. 

They chew the sw^eet, and suck the sour, 

And know not which is sweeter, — 
The cowslip, and calypso flow^er, 

Bald breath, and burning metre, 
Milton, or SJ^elton, — all is one ; 

None darkle dim where none shine : 
And with a blindness of their own 

They blot the breeze and sunshine. 



TO THE RIVER. 53 

Oh, might I plunge beneath the flow 

For one forgetful minute, 
And, leaving all my dreams below, 

Else like a bubble in it, 
And sweep along to lose myself 

With all the current seizes ; 
But in the blows of brass and delf 

I fear to go to pieces ! 

Perhaps my hand would urge the cup 

To press apart a nation, 
Or, where the Fountain forces up, 

Drop tears of congelation ; 
Or pull with them that strain to drag 

The chords of Union tauter. 
Stream to the poles with club and flag. 

And crossed with sacred water. 

But hold ! nor cloud our night with these : 
Why should we crowd or quarrel ? 

Look ! in the west the Golden Bees 
Hang o'er the mountain laurel ; 



54 TO THE RIVER. 

And, see ! in every spot of wet, 
Tlie coltsfoot groups and glistens ; 

While, with a dew, — the holiest yet, — 
Young Night her children christens. 

Why should I set my feeble strength 

A bitter blame to cancel, 
Or hold a traitor up at length, 

Or tear away a tinsel. 
Or beat about for bribe or boon ; 

When here, in pool and shallow, 
I see the fragment of a moon, 

Rimmed with a fragment halo ? 



55 



PAET 11. 



31 ^ul that out d| Itatiiit'H ieep. 



I. 

A SOUL that out of Nature's deep 
From inner fires had Hrth ; 

Yet not as rocks or rosebuds peep : 
Nor came it to the earth 

II. 
A drop of rain at random blown ; 

A star-point burning high, 
Lit in the dark, and as alone 

As Lyra in the sky : 



56 A SOUL THAT OUT OF 

III. 
Nor ushered in with stormy air, 

Sea-shock, or earthquake-jars ; 
Nor born to fame beneath some rare 

Conspiracy of stars ; 

IV. 

Nor fortune-crowned with benefits : 

The life was larger lent. 
Made up of many opposites 

In contradiction blent : — 

V. 

A nature affable and grand, 
Yet cold as headland snow. 

Large-handed, liberal to demand, 
Though still to proffer slow ; 

VI. 

That shunned to share the roaring cup. 
The toast, and cheerings nine, 

Nor cared to sit alone to sup 
The pleasure of the wine ; 



natuke's deep. 57 

VII. 

Yet genial oft by flash and fit ; 

High manners, courage mild, — 
God gave him these, and savage wit 

As to an Indian child : 

VIII. 

And gave him more than this indeed, — 

The wisdom to descry 
A weathercock in the waving weed, 

A clock-face in the sky. 

IX. 

But he, amid these bowers and dales 

A larger life -breath drew. 
Beneath more cordial sunshine, gales, 

And skies of sounder blue, 

X. 

Than wait on all. Beside the brook, 

With far forgetful eye. 
Or toward the deep hills, would he look, 

Watching the glory die ; 



58 A SOUL THAT OUT OF 

XI. 

Brooding in dim solicitude 

On earlier, other times, 
And yon dark-purple wing of wood 

That o'er the mountain climbs ; 

XII. 

And fancies thick like flower-buds bright ; 

Eare thoughts in affluence rank, 
Came at the onset of the light. 

Nor with the sunset sank. 

XIII. 

He slept not, but the dream had way, 
And his watch abroad was cast 

With the earliest light of the earliest day ; 
And, when the light fell fast, 

XIV. 

He stood in the river- solitudes 

To mark the daylight go ; 
And low in the dusk of the wailing woods 

He heard the night-hawk blow. 



nature's deep. 59 

XV. 

The niglit-liawk, and tlie wliippoorwill 

Across the plashes dim, 
CalHng her mate from bower and hill, 

Made prophecy for him : 

XYI. 

The night-hawk and the bird bereaved, 

His airy calendars, 
He stood ; till night had, unperceived. 

Surrounded him with stars. 

XVII. 

Oh ! dear the look of upward eyes 

Lifted with pleading might, 
A smile to bless and humanize, 

A hand to fold aright ; 

XVIII. 

A silver voice to lead and lull ; 

Slight step, and streamy hair, — 
But, oh ! she was too beautiful 

That he should call her fair. 



60 A SOUL THAT OUT OF 

XIX. 

A love to pay, a life to give, 
Was hers, — for this she strove ; 

And he, too, loved, and would not live 
To live out of her love. 

XX. 

And childhood came his smile beneath, 

And lingered hour on hour, 
With sweepy lids, and innocent breath 

Like the grape-hyacinth flower. 

XXI. 

For this, for all, his heart was full ; 

Yet, to the deeper mind. 
All outward passion seemed to dull 

That inmost sense refined 

XXII. 

That broods and feeds where few have trod ; 

And seeks to pass apart. 
Imaging nature, man, and God, 

In silence in the heart. 



natuee's deep. 61 

XXIII. 

He saw — for to that secret eye 

God's hidden things were spread — 
The wiser w^orld in darkness He, 

And Faith hy Falsehood led. 

XXIV. 

Virtue and Envy, side by side ; 

Blind Will that walks alone ; 
And mighty throngs that come and glide, 

Unknowing and unknown ; 

XXV. 

Great lights ! but quenched ; strength, foresight, skill, 

Gone without deed or name ; 
And happy accidents that still 

Misplace the wreaths of fame ; 

XXVI. 

Religion, but a bruited word 

'Twixt foes who difference view 
Between our Saviour, God the Lord, 
, And Jesus Christ the Jew ! 



62 A SOUL THAT OUT OF 

XXVII. 
Yet unto all, one wall and fold ; 

One bed that all must sliare, — 
The miser brooding holy gold, 

The fool, and spendthrift heir ; 

XXVIII. 

Still through the years the wrinkled chuif 

Acre to acre rolled ; 
And he, too, will have land enough 

When his mouth is filled with mould. 

XXIX. 

And vaster visions did he win 
From cloud, and mountain bars. 

And revelations that within 
Fell like a storm of stars ! 

XXX. 

Yet checked and crossed by doubt and night ; 

Dim gulfs, and soHtudes 
Of the deep mind ; or warmth and Hght 

Broke from its shifting moods, 



nature's deep. 63 

XXXI. 

As when in many-weathered March 
May-buds break up through snow, 

And, spilt like milk, beneath the larch 
The little bluets blow ; 

XXXII. 

Beneath the lilac and the larch, 

In many a splash and spot ; 
Nor belting sea, nor heaven's blue arch. 

Bound in where these were not — 

XXXIII. 

With Love and Peace : yet strangely sank 

Cold sorrow on his soul, 
For human wisdom, and the blank 

Summation of the whole. 

XXXIV. 

Nor seemed it fit, that one, unnerved 
And faint, should rouse the earth ; 

Or build with those whose zeal had served 
But to incense his mirth. 



64 A SOUL THAT OUT OF 

XXXV. 

Troubled to tears, he stood and gazed,— 
Unknowing where to weep, 

To spend his cries o'er fabrics razed. 
Or a safe silence keep ; 

XXXVI. 

Eenouncing human life and lore ; 

Love's calm, and love's excess. 
Experience and allegiance, for 

A higher passiveness. 

XXXVII. 

So to drink full of Nature, much 

Eecipient, still to woo 
Her windy walk, where pine-trees touch 

Against the ribby blue ; 

XXXVIII. 

To find her feet by singing rills, 

Adoring and alone, — 
O'er grassy fields, to the still hills. 

Her solemn seat and throne ! 



65 



XXXIX. 

Sore struggle ! yet, wlien passed, that seemed 

A crowning conquest o'er 
Himself and human bands : he deemed 

The victory more and more, 

XL. 

And like that warfare urged upon 

Unkingly lust and ease. 
Which the fifth Henry waged and won ; 

Or that Lydiades 

XLI. 

Who left his looser life with tears. 

And in the fire of youth 
Lived grave and chaste, xircadian years 

And reigned ; — kings, heroes, both ! 

XLII. 

Ah, so — but not to him returned, 

Our monarch, meed like this, 
But sterner kin his grief had spurned, 

And bitter friends were his. 

5 



66 A SOUL THAT OUT OF 

XLIII. 
Distrust and Fear beside him took, 

Witli Shame, their hateful stands ; 
And Sorrow passed, and struck the book 

Of knowledge from his hands. 

XLIV. 

He saw, with absent, sorrowing heed, 
All that had looked so fair ; 

His secret walk was wild with weed, 
His gardens washed and bare : 

XLV. 

The very woods were filled with strife ; 

Fierce beaks and warring wings 
Clashed in his face ; the heart and life 

Of those deep-hidden springs, 

XLVI. 

No more his spirit cared to quaff : 
Great Nature lost her place, — 

Pushed from her happy heights, and half 
Degraded of her grace. 



nature's deep. 67 

XLYII. 

And so he saw the morning white, 

As eyes with tears opprest, 
The last heart-breaking gleam of light 

That dies along the West. 

XL VIII. 

And so he saw the opening flower 

Dry in the August sheaf, 
And on green Summer's top and tower, 

Only the turning leaf : 

XLIX. 

For Summer's darkest green, explored, 

Betrays the crimson blight ; 
As, in the heart of darlmess cored, 

Red sparks and seeds of light 



And lightning lurk, ready to leap 

Abroad, beyond reclaim ; 
To bathe a world in splendour deep, 

Or snatch in folding flame. 

5-2 



68 A SOUL THAT OUT OF 

LI. 
He saw, with manners, age, and mode. 

Opinion rise and sink, 
The jarring clash of creed and code, 

And knew not what to think ; — 

LII. 

Behefs of ritual and of race ; — 

And hard it was to tell 
Why good should come hy gift of grace. 

And wrong he chargeable. 

LIII. 

Before him burned attainless towers ! 

Behind, a comfortless 
Dim valley, waste with poison-flowers, 

And weeds of barrenness. 

LIV. 

The early ray, the early dream. 
Had vanished ; faint and chill 

Like winter, did the morning stream 
On woodland, house, and hill : 



nature's deep. 69 

LV. 

Yet, as of old, lie ranged apart 

By river-bank and bed, 
And mused in bitterness of heart ; 

And to himself he said, — 

LYI. 

Tear sullen Monkshood where he stands 

Tall by the garden walk ; 
With burning pricks and venom -glands, 

Pluck off the nettle.' s stalk ; 

L^^I. 
Lobelia fi'om the rivage break. 

With Arum's bhstering bell ; 
And, over all, let the bundle reek 

With the smilax' loathly smell ; 

LYIII. 

Fools' parsley from the graves of fools, 

With deadly darnels bring ; 
Yew, garget, dogwood of the pools, 

And the fen's unwholesome spring ; 



70 A SOUL THAT OUT OF 

LIX. 
And hemlock pull; and snatckfrom bees 

Half-drugged, the red-bud rare, 
And laurel ; but prick in with these 

The shaft of a lily fair ; 

LX. 

And bind them up ; rank blossom, sting. 

Bough, berry, poison rife, 
Embodying and embleming 

The gleanings of a life." 

LXI. 

Yet was not she, the lily-flower, 

'Mid failings and misdeeds, 
The fruit of many a scattered hour. 

Yet fairer for the weeds ? 

LXII. 

And was she not, through shade and shower, 

In patient beauty drest, 
Though lonely in her place and power. 

Enough to save the rest ? 



nature's deep. 71 

LXIII. 

Perhaps ; yet darker gloomed the vale, 

And dawned the turrets fair, 
Beyond the height of ladder's scale, 

Or any step of stair. 

LXIV. 

And yearned his soul for sharper change, — 

And knowledge of the light ; 
Yet not by station, staff, or range 

Of human toil or flight, 

LXV. 

Would he ascend ; choosing alone 

With grief to make his bed, 
Like those whose godhead is their own ; 

On whom the curse is said, — 

LXYI. 

Who kindle to themselves a fire, 

And in the light thereof 
Walk, and are lost. But his desire 

Was still for wiser love ; 



72 A SOUL THAT OUT OF 

LXVII. 
And sought but in the holy place ; 

And scarcely sought, but found 
In still reception : failing this, 

All life in death seemed drowned. 

LXVIII. 

Yet sometimes, doubting, discord-tost, 
Came voices to his side, — 

Echoes of youth, and friendships lost, 
Or lost, or left aside. 

LXIX. 

Faces, wherein deep histories are. 

Began to float and flee. 
And hover darkly, like a far 

Forgotten memory ; 

LXX. 

Dim gardens, where a silent creek 
Stole onward, margin-mossed ; 

And walks, with here and there a streak 
Of dusky odour crossed. 



nature's deep. 73 

LXXI. 

Stirring the wells of tears. He saw 

The vision of his youth, 
With holy grief, with holy awe : 

The temple-towers of Truth 

LXXII. 

Broke nearer ; like a thunder-flash 

Again came back the dream, 
And light in many a bar and dash, 

Like moonlight, flake, and beam, 

LXXIII. 

Or when wild clouds of middle air 

Through hurrying gaps reveal 
Arcturus, or the sailing star 

That spurs Orion's heel ; — 

LXXIV. 

Heaven's lights ! yet covered as we look ; 

So, momently to view. 
Came back the sparkle of the brook, 

And fields his childhood knew ; 



74 A SOUL THAT OUT OF 

LXXV. 

Fair faith and love, with peace almost ; 

Yet, in that ray serene, 
He only saw a glory lost. 

And what he might have been. 

LXXVI. 

The precious grains his hands had spilled 

Had fallen to others ; they 
Had passed before, his place was j&lled. 

And the world rolled away. 

LXXVII. 

Too late he learned that Nature's parts 

Whereto we lean and cling, 
Change, but as change our human hearts. 

Nor grow by worshipping ; 

LXXVIII. 

And that her presence, fair or grand. 

In these faint fields below, 
Importeth little, seen beyond 

Our welfare, or our woe. 



nature's deep. 75 

LXXIX. 

Nor good from ill can we release, — 

But weigh the world in full ; 
Not separate taken, part and piece, 

But indiscerptible. 

LXXX. 

In law and limit, tempests blow ; 

Tides swing from shore to shore ; 
And so the forest-tree will grow 

As grew the tree before. 

LXXXI. 

Too late he learned by land and sea 

This bitter truth to glean, — 
That he who would know what shall be. 

Must ponder what hath been ; 

LXXXII. 

Nor unto fear or falsehood yield 
His strength, the good to baulk ; 

Nor fold his arms beside the field, 
But ivith the furrow walk. 



76 A SOUL THAT OUT OF NATURE'S DEEP. 

LXXXIII. 
Ready to cast his grain ; and slower 

To faint, more credulous, 
Believing well that but by our 

Own hands God helpeth us. 

LXXXIV. 

And who would find out Wisdom's grot. 
To make her footsteps his, — 

Must learn to look where it is not, 
As well as where it is. 



77 



SJlu f hiang^ir. 



Ere the first red-orange glimmer 

Touched the dial on the lawn, 

In the earliest shade, and shimmer 

Of the dawn ; 
When the dark was growing dimmer. 
And the moon, 'mid wavy clouds 
Struggling for the horizon-land, 
Had vanished like a worn-out swimmer 
Feeding on the misty shrouds, 
Nature's grief to grief suborning, 
Stood a man alone in sorrow 
On a lifted ledge of pines ; 
Over mounted woods, and sand. 
Valley, and rolling mountain-lines, 
Watching for the morrow ; — 



78 THE STEANGER. 

Watcliing for the daylight, 

In the weeping twilight, 

In the anguish of the morning. 

When first I paused upon these barren bluffs 

Of westland Massachusetts, and looked off 

From mountain-roofs thatched by the dropping 

pine 
With his loose leaf, — a natural water-shed ; — 
Upon the hamlet twinkling through the growth. 
The river-silver scattered in the grass, 
And all the Tyrian hills ! there seemed to me 
No spot so fair in all the fair Estate. 
And He believed it too ; for when the hours 
Had, field by field, unlinked the folded vale. 
And led me softly by the mountain paths. 
And up the hollow rivers ; — teaching still 
New names and natures in their thoughtful round : 
And I had followed all the groves that go 
From Shaking- Acres, to the Neighbour's Hole ! 
Still, with each deep-blue gap, or piece of pines, 
Or upland farm -field lovely and apart. 



THE STKANGER. 79 

I found him there, the Stranger. Vague and dim 

The wind stirs through these mountain-terraces 

In the burning day ; and such his motion seemed : 

Yet, like the ailing wind, went everywhere 

With a faint, fluttering step ; and, when he stood, 

He stood as one about to fall, as now 

Sick Autumn stands, with weak-blue vapour 

crowned. 
A man who seemed to have walked through life 

alone : 
Feeble he was, and something stepped in years, 
Yet sought no succour save of sun and shade ; 
But ever went apart, and held his face 
Deep in the shadow. But most he loved to lie 
By poplar-shafts, or where yon maple-stock 
Bears on his fork a ball of umbrage up. 
And waits for Autumn's wain : in the deep day, 
At morning's edge, or night, his place was there. 

Skirting the valley, north by needle runs 
A sapling coppice, scrags and second-growth, 
With sucker-brush and seedlings intermixed, 



80 THE STRANGER. 

And a wood-patli thrids tlirougii from end to end: 
There breathes the scented pyrola, and there 
The perfect fragrance of the partridge-flower, 
*Mid moss, and maiden-hah-, and damp dead 

leaves ; — 
A poet's cloister for a hidden hour. 
And there I found him murmuring to himself 
Like a low brook, but could not come to drink 
His words ; for still the bond that should have 

drawn 
Held us apart, — that love of lonely Nature, 
And quick impatience of human neighbourhood. 
And I believed he was some natural poet, 
With a great sorrow hard against his heart, 
And shunned to tread too close : yet while I gazed 
On the sad, patient brow, and the fixed lip 
Where silence brooded, I longed to look within 
On the completed story of his life ; 
So easy still it seemed to lift the hand, 
And open it, as I would a disused door 
Locked with a dusty web. But he passed out ; 
And, if he had a grief, it went with him, 



THE STRANGER. 81 

And all the treasure of his untold love ; — 
A love that carried him forward with the cloud, 
Drew him with river-currents, and at night 
Impelled him to the mountain's edge and fall 
Among the crowding woods and cataracts. 

So 
The Summer parted ; but ere Autumn's cold 
Bade the fall-cricket cease his mournful hymn, 
By steps and rests of rock, I once again, 
Half- seeking him I shunned, one still fair day 
And in the sunshine of the afternoon, 
Climbed upward to the overlooking ledge, 
And stood in thought beneath the dropping pine. 
There shook the shining Kiver, and there glimpsed 
The village sunk in foliage at my feet, 
And one vast pine leaned outward to the gulf. 
On a great root that held the tree to the hill, 
I saw him sitting, till the late red light 
Fell wearing westward, and still he sat, and looked 
Toward the dim remainder of the day ; 
And in his hand a bunch of blazing leaves. 
Torn from the sumach as he passed along ; 

6 



82 THE STKANGEE. 

While round his feet gathered the mountain flower, 
Dry asters, hardhack, and the withering fern. 
The night came dark between us on the hill, 
And nevermore have I beheld his face ; 
Yet often since, when I have walked with Sorrow, 
In solitude, and hopelessness of heart. 
Have I recalled that time, and wondered whether 
The old man still went weary on the earth, 
And if my dreams of his high gift were true : 
But I have waited long indeed to hear 
These rivers break in song, or, bluely dark. 
Behold these mountains rank in rolling verse. 
Or our red forests light the landscape line. 
Something I still have learned, — respect of pa- 
tience, 
And that mysterious Will that proves the heart, 
Breaking away the blossoms of its joy, 
And, for our latest love, restoring grief ; 
A swifter sympathy for human pain ; 
And knowledge of myself, grown out of this, 
Unguessed before ; a humbler, higher belief 
In God and Nature ; and more surrendered love. 



THE STRANGER. 83 

Still clings the pine-root clamped into the crag ; 
But the dead top is dry, beneath whose boughs 
He sat, and watched the West ; and, in my walks, 
So changed I feel as I approach the place, 
So old in heart and step, it almost seems 
As if the Wanderer left his life for mine, 
When night came dark between us on the hill : 
A double interchange, as if indeed 
'Twas my old self that disappeared with him, 
And he in me still walks the weary earth. 
But these are fancies, and so indeed is most 
That I have dreamed or uttered in this regard. 
Worthless of utterance may be at the best, 
Since first the Stranger came among these rocks : 
A common man perhaps, with common cares ; 
Guiltless of grief, or high romantic love 
Of natural beauty ; a common life at last. 
Though strangely set and shrined in circumstance. 

Ah ! did the brook sob hoarse, the dark tree pine 
With all its branches, when first I missed him 
hence ? — 

6—2 



84 THE STRANGER. 

And found liim not, wlietlier my erring feet 
Followed the waste flowers up the upland side, 
Or dipped in grass, or scaled the Poet's Rock, 
Or slid beneath the pines in Wells's woods : 
Did Nature bid me mourn ? or was it but 
The restless beating in my own vague mind 
That drove me on ? I know not this ; but he 
Had passed away for ever from the hills. 
No more for him, 'mid fallen waves of grass, 
Mower or harvest-hand shall mop his brows. 
And look across the sunshine ; nevermore 
Gruff village cur, or even the patient yoke 
That after them draw the furrow in the field. 
Shall seem to watch those footsteps. 

Years have gone. 
And, but with me, his memory must be dead ; 
Yet oft I see a Figure in the fields. 
And scarce less real than his personal self. 
Which ever faded as the foot drew near. 
I often see the figure in the fields, 
And hear low verses wailing in the wind. 
And I have mourned for him and for his grief ; 



THE STRANGER. 85 

Yet never heard his name, and never knew 

Word of his history, or why he came 

Into this outskirt of the wilder land ; 

And know not now, whether among the roofs 

He parted fair, or, as the people say. 

Went off between two days, and left the woods 

And wilds to mourn him, with the sisjhin": stream. 



86 



AN IDYLL. 

The wind, that all the day had scarcely clashed 
The cornstalks in the sun, as the sun sank, 
Came rolling up the valley like a wave, 
Broke in the beech, and washed among the pine, 
And ebbed to silence ; but at the welcome sound, — 
Leaving my lazy book without a mark. 
In hopes to lose among the blowing fern 
The dregs of a headache brought from yesternight. 
And stepping lightly lest the children hear, — 
I from a side-door slipped, and crossed a lane 
With bitter Mayweed lined, and over a field 
Snapping with grasshoppers, until I came 
Down where an interrupted brook held way 
Among the alders. There, on a strutting branch 
Leaving my straw, I sat and wooed the west. 
With breast and palms outspread as to a fire. 



THE SCHOOL-GIRL. 87 

The breeze had faded, and the day had died ; 
And twiHght, rosy-dark, had ceased to climb 
Above the borders ; when through the alder-thicks 
A school-girl fair came up against the brook ; 
From dell and gurgling hollow, where she had 

stopped 
To pull sweet-flag. And she had been below, 
Where the brook doubles, — for well I knew each 
Angle, and alnage of the weedy stream, — [knot, 
For those pale amber bell-worts wet with shade : 
A girl whom the girl-mother's desperate love 
Had clung to, through the years when, one on one, 
All of her blood had blushed to drop away ; 
And she was left the last, with this one tie 
To hang her to the earth. So her young life, 
Above the gulf, detached, and yet detained, 
Suspended swung ; as o'er a fresh-fallen pool 
A laurel-blossom, loosened by the rain, 
Hangs at its pistil-thread — hangs, shakes, and falls. 

I saw her crossing through the alder-thicks 
And flowerless spoonwood : but, when she stopped 
to speak, 



88 THE SCHOOL-GIEL. 

I seemed to lift my head out of a dream 

To gaze upon her ; for the ceaseless chime 

Of insect-voices singing in the grass, — 

Ticking and thrilling in the seeded grass, — 

Had sent me dreaming. I mused ; and consciously, 

In a half-darkness, so would sink away. 

But ever and again the soft wind rose, 

x\nd from my eyelids blew the skimming sleep. 

I looked upon her, and her eyes were wet ; 

While something of her mother's colour burned 

Gay in her cheek : too like her mother there. 

She stood, and called me from the land of dreams. 

The land of visions ! But she, lingering, seemed 
Most like a vision, standing in her tears, 
Speaking unreal words : but, when I sought 
Their import, she said again in clearer tone 
Her salutation, and asked, "Did I not fear 
The night's unwholesome dew?" and offered 

flowers. 
And as we wandered homeward, by the slopes. 
And through the sugar-orchard to the hill. 
She told me of her griefs : her music-lesson — 



THE SCHOOL-GIRL. 89 

She could not play the notes, nor count aright. 

And she had sung hefore she broke her fast 

That morning, and needs must weep hefore she 

slept ; 
And so throughout the day : until at night, 
As she Tr;is winding upward by the brook, 
The thought of her dead mother crossed her heart, 
And with it came the fear that she herself 
Would die, too, young. 

I spoke some soothing words. 
For her frank sorrow yielding sympathy ; 
And, as we rose the hill, stood for a breath. 
And told an Indian story of the place, — 
Of Wassahoale and the fair Quaker maid. 
Who left the bog-hut for a chieftain's lodge, 
Until her face grew clear again and calm. 
Yet like a sky that cleareth in the night. 
Presaging rain to follow. We wandered down ; 
But, ere we reached the village, she said farewell, 
Nearing the house in which her father dwelt, — 
Her father, and his brother, and herself. 
But I passed on until she left me there 



90 THE SCHOOL-GIRL. 

At her own garden-gate, with a half-smile, 
And eyelashes fresh-pointed with her tears. 

Two brothers were they, dwelling in this place 
When first I knew their names and history, 
And held for heirs upon the village street ; 
Yet trained to work from starlight until dusk 
For their old father. But he now was old, 
Reputed rich, and like the bark to the tree ; 
Tougher perhaps, but tight enough for that. 
And so they toiled and waited, stretched and 

scrimped, 
With one maid-sister fitted to reserve. 
Early and late, until their hands were hard, 
And their youth left them. Still the promised day 
Drew nearer, — the day of rest and competence ; 
And years went round, and still they rose and slept. 
Not for themselves, but him who harder held, 
Like a man drowning, his remorseless gripe 
As his strength went. At length, when hope was 
The very doorstones at the door worn out, [o'er, 
And they themselves grown old, the old man died ; 



THE SCHOOL-GIRL. 91 

And left them poor at last, with a great house 
That fed upon their substance like a moth. 
Bond-debt and meadow-mortgage had the rest, 
All but the house, — a sorry patrimony. 
To-day I saw it, staring, lacking paint, 
With a new suit of shingles to the sky ; 
Spruce-pine perhaps, but sapwood at the best, 
Good for three years, and warranted to rot. 

Kegardless this ; but she of whom I spoke, 

The elder brother's child, was like a light 

In the blank house : not practical, in truth, 

Nor like the father's side, as oftentimes 

The child is more the mother's than the man's ; 

But dearer far for this : and in the porch, — 

Where, for a mortal lifetime certainly, 

Was seen the old man sitting like a stone, — 

Gathered young footsteps, and light laughter ran. 

And sweet-girl voices. Once, indeed, I saw 

An awkward youth in the dark angle there, 

Banghng and flapping like a maple-key 

Hung in a cobweb ; but she still was kind, 



92 THE SCHOOL-GIRL. 

Gentle with all, and, as slie seemed for me 
Beside the brook, thoughtful beyond her years. 

That night, I scarcely slept, before I dreamed 
Of softly stepping in the meadow grass . 
With moccason on foot : and like indeed, 
The Indian of the story that I told ; 
While she who wandered with me in the day, 
Still went beside ; yet changing in her turn. 
Became the truant daughter of the woods ! 
Now seemed herself, now Phcebe Bellflower, 
And neither now, — but on I passed alone. 
And like myself, thro' dewless bent and reed, 
Brooding again the School-girl's simple griefs, 
And her sweet farewell face, and murmuring soft 
These words : — 

" Sleep, sister ! let thy faint head fall, 
Weary with day's long-fading gleam ; 

And blessed Gloom, in interval 

Of daylight, bind thine eyes, and seem 

To lead thee on through dim-lit dells. 

Trembling with tiny harps and bells. 



THE SCHOOL-GIRL. 93 

The flowers you found along the day, 
While balmy stars of midnight shine, 

May those forgetting fingers sway ; 

And so, until the morning stream, 
May all of fair and good be thine, — 

Gathered from daylight, or dim hours 
When balmy stars of midnight shine ! 

" Eest, maiden ! let thy sorrows rest, — 

Nor tearful on the future look, — 
The sinless secrets of thy breast ; 

And close the record like a book. 
And thus aside for ever lay 
The disappointments of the day : 

Nor note nor number bid thee weep ; 
But lie, lie on, and let thy dream 

Dim off to slumber dark and deep." — 
I heard the whisper of the brook ; 

While the dry fields across the stream. 
With myriad-music of the night, 

Still shook and jingled in my dream." 



94 



31 ^mn^U of (^o§u leans, 

SENT TO THE AUTHOR, WITH A REQUEST FOR A POEM ; 
OR, 

THE PUBLICAN, THE PEDDLER, AND THE POET. 



Twelve plain brown beans ! 'Twould seem to ask 

As plain, indeed, a string of verses : 
But beans are sweet ; and tliougb my task 

Must deal with these, and, what far worse is, 
A story dry must dress or dock, 

So to search out fair Truth, or shun her, — 
Yet may I garnish up the stock. 

And hang it with the scarlet runner. 

The bean, the garden-bean, I sing, — 

Lima, mazagan, late and early. 
Bush, butter, black eye, pole and string. 

Esculent, annual, planted yearly : 



A SAMPLE OF COFFEE-BEANS. 95 

Sure here a poet well might fare, 

Nor vaguely his invention worry ; 
I shake my head in flat despair ; 

Or out and over the hills I hurry, 

As lo fled by Nigris' stream, — 

Spurred by the angry brize or bot-bee : 
But beans I sing, a classic theme 

Kjiown to the Muse ; and may they not be 
Melodious made in other than 

The lyric verse or amoebsean, — 
Beans, hateful to the banished man. 

And banned by the Pythagorean ? 

Loose, or in legume blue and red, 

Tinged like a tom-turkey's wattle ; 
Or strung like birds' eggs on a thread ; 

Or stiff and dry in pods they rattle : 
Beans too, in bladders, discomposed 

By stroke and blow, make music mystic ; 
But these are free in hand, nor closed 

In their own natural cells, or cystic. 



9^y A SAMPLE OF COFEEE-BEANS. 

.<' 

May I not, inly pondering, see, 

Or stumbling on in flight phrenetic. 
Enough of truth and simile, 

To strew the way with flowers poetic ? 
No ! though on every side they fell, 

Dispersed like the gold hemony 
On Ulai's bank, with asphodel, 

Lote, lily-blow, and anemone. 

Beans would be beans, the gardener's joy ; 

And, though to him more dear than roses. 
Not to be made to senses coy 

Kose-redolent, by any process. 
Let me, then, cease to stir my breast, 

Nor longer stay to bribe or flatter 
The vegetable text ; but rest. 

Or get at once into my matter. 

A little public-house and bar, 

Barn, corn-house, dovecote, gathered under 
A mighty elm, which, arching far. 

Held ofl" the rain and drew the thunder ; 



A SAMPLE OF COFFEE-BEANS. 97 

A farmstead small of shabby huts, 
Unknown to cane or cotton grower, 

And just within the line that cuts 
The States, and Canada the Lower : 

A little public-house and bar 

Smelling of beer and dead tobacco. 
It stood ; within, a bench and chair, 

A parrot, and an ape ; but Jacko 
Was stuffed above the chimney-piece. 

And Poll was plaster : so we summon 
The holders of our house of ease. 

And live incumbents, man and woman. 

Jolly and old the landlord was. 

Part farmer, and part broadcloth-smuggler ; 
The wife a patient drudge, alas ! 

With aches and asthma long a straggler ; 
Yet day and night she served the grate : 

He scarcely past beyond the groundsill ; 
But, feet in slipper-shoes, sat late. 

And drew his ale, and kept his counsel. 

7 



98 A SAMPLE OF COFFEE-BEANS. 

Above his head an almanac 

Depended, while the slate and pencil, 
On toddy-stick and tumbler-rack, 

Kept watch, and stood to charge or cancel : 
Nought else, except a faded, grim. 

Fly-spattered print of Buonaparte, 
And the host's Sunday hat and trim, , 

Hung, like their owner, plump and hearty. 

Another too, a poet slim. 

Came nightly from the neighbour-village 
To this retreat ; more sweet to him 

Than leafy summer-house, or treillage 
Wherethrough the moonbeams fall : the wreath 

Trailed from the pipe of passing drover. 
More rare than the grape-blossom's breath. 

Or night-gusts o'er the beds of clover. 

In the world- drama he was one. 
Bearing, perhaps, a part like Peto 

In the old play : yet did he shun 

The world, and, reckless of mosquito. 



A SAMPLE OF COFFEE-BEANS. 99 

By pond-hole dark, and weedy drain, 
Sequestered swamp, or grassy side-hill, 

"Would linger, breathing dull disdain 
In many a rustic ode and idyll ; 

And breathing beauty too, and wit ; 

Nor lacked it in poetic ardour, 
His verse ; for, where he doubted it. 

He struck again, and hammered harder : 
'Twas hit or miss, to make or maul, — 

Not quite a Walter Scott or Byron, — 
Two blows upon the anvil fall, 

And one upon the burning iron ! 

Good fellow was he in the main, 

Yet strangely strove to be unhappy, 
Himself a desert-chief would feign, 

And Cow-cliff, Ararat or Api ; 
Or, all alone, would weep, to cleanse 

Some fancied shame or felony ; 
Or, witchlike, haunt the birchwood glens 

For vervain dank and chelone. 



100 A SAMPLE OF COFFEE-BEANS. 

A chamber, too, lie had at times 

For needful rest : but his ambition 
Was still to read and rant his rhymes, 

Unwearied with their repetition ; 
Or over some old tale bemused 

To lie, till chilled and hunger-bitten, 
Along a floor with books confused. 

And blotted sheets, and rolls o'erwritten. 

Full well he knew the stars and flowers. 

The atmosphere, its height and pressure, 
The laws that gird the globe, and powers 

That make our peril or our pleasure. 
He knew each bird, its range and sphere ; 

For plant and shrub, had many an odd use : 
But naught of farming-growths or gear, 

And less of garden- sauce and produce : 

So when the peddler passed, and brought 
His last new lot of lies and lumber, — 

Tins, foot-stove, gridiron, pail, and pot. 

And drugs, and dry-goods, without number ; 



A SAMPLE OF COFPEE-BEAXS. 101 

Cigars too in the grocery line ; 

Tracts, extracts, jellies, quince, or guava, 
And, rarest, seed for coffee-vine, 

Pure beau or berry, just from Java ; 

He listened : " Sure to sprout ; in fall 

To ripen, let the world go onward, 
A row of oaken scrags was all 

They needed, so to scramble sunward." 
*' happy thou," the schoolslip read, 

" Who with thy hands thy fortune carvest ! " 
'^ But happiest," so the peddler said, 

*' Is he who gets such grain in harvest." 

And so they talked. The summer wind 

Came softly from the meadow blowing. 
Through open door and window-blind 

Brought the pine's breath across the mowing ; 
It stirred the print, it jarred the slate. 

It waved the farmer's best apparel. 
And shook the dry weeds in the grate, 

And withered grasses, awn and aril. 



102 A SAMPLE OF COFFEE-BEANS. 

And still they talked ; and, ere the wind 

Had faded, all that parcel precious 
Was to our hero's hand resigned 

For future use. May such refresh us, 
And him who held his luck revealed ! 

His own, no douhtful risk or far gain, 
But silver planted, sure to yield, 

And bless him with a golden bargain. 

And then the landlord drew his best ; 

No hoarded drops of vintage fruity, 
But good to speed the parting guest 

And cheer the new : so while in duty 
The poet drank, and called for more, 

The landlord, like a desert sandy, 
The peddler parted, richer for 

Six dollars and a slug of brandy. 

What more ? Why, naught. 'Twere slow to tell 
The sequel here ; such Glaucian traffic 

May well befit a Homer's shell. 

Or Virgil's harp ; or, sung in Sapphic, 



A SAMPLE OF COFFEE-BEANS. 103 

Perhaps 'twould mount a tlieme divine ; 

But, in this mess of jar and jingle, 
'Twould pose the nine brains of the Nine 

To make much sense and music mingle. 

Yet might I tell how hard he wrought. 

Rising betimes to watch his purchase ; 
And left his rhymes and dreams forgot, 

And lonely walks beneath the birches ; 
And how the vines got riper fast ; 

Till, battered pan with sauce-pan clinking, 
He borrowed fire, and saw at last 

His prize, burnt, ground, and hot for drinking ; 

And how the Poet stirred and supt 

With an old spoon new-bought at auction. 
And thought the world's w^ays all corrupt, — 

For so he found his pure decoction ; 
Not fragrant, black, and fit indeed 

To set before a KJng or Sophi ; 
But slate-stones for his silver seed ! 

And, for his coffee-bean, bean-coffee ! 



104 A SAMPLE OF COFFEE-BEANS. 

His letter, too, — 'tis here, addressed 

To some society Botanic, 
In languid ink ; though fitted best 

On wharf and mart to scatter panic. 
A massive missive certainly, 

Nor writ with rifled plume of seraph ; 
See here ! the dotloss j and i 

Deform, with sprawly date, and paraph. 

And last, not least, could I repeat 

The landlord's glee, when, thither poldng, 
The poet sneaked into his seat. 

And all the glory of the joking ; 
How the old fellow roared, forsooth. 

And laughed from shining poll to shoelap ; 
Whilst the old lady showed her tooth. 

And coughed, and shook the double dewlap. 

Enough ! the house still stands the same, 
With barn and steadings ; but the elm -tree 

Went down in a great blow that came 
To flatten fence and overwhelm tree. 



A SAMPLE OF COFFEE-BEANS. 105 

Yet looks the ale-bench on the way, 
And, as of old, the twain divide it ; 

But, since the coffee-trade, they say 
The peddler has not passed beside it. 



106 



^ latteri-ilag ^aini 



A GRAY old man, with a descending beard 
Rugged and lioar, and a still massive face, 
Met daily in the way. Mall, market-place. 
By-way, and thoroughfare his steps have heard 
At night and noon. The voice, the utterance 

slow. 
And downward gesture like a blacksmith's blow ; 
Regardless ear ; and eye that would not see, 
Or saw as if it saw collectively, — 
Who does not call to mind ? We thought of all. 
Resembling him to each one, — Plato, Paul, 
Or him who round besieged Jerusalem 
Fled, shrieking **Woe!" — woe to himself and 

them, — 



A LATTER-DAY SAINT. 107 

Until the catapult dashed out his life. 

Here, on this slab, above the tear and strife. 

He stood, and saw the great world fume and 

foam on. 
As on a dial-plate, himself the gnomon ; 
Or, like old Time, he leaned on his scythe- 
snath, 
Waiting the harvest of the day of wrath, 
Now reaping-ripe : anon, with word and blow. 
He thunders judgment to the throngs below ; 
The end of things he prophesies and paints, 
And of the rest remaining for God's saints ; 
To one conclusion all his reasons run, 
And this he sees, taldng his hearers on 
From point to point ; though still discursively 
The addle-eggs about his temples fly. 
Again he wanders by — you wonder where. 
And follow pityingly, but miss him there : 
Forgetful soon, you join the stream and stress 
Of the great Street ; when to yon Porch superb. 
Behold ! the crowd runs, blackening flag and 
curb, 



108 A LATTER-DAY SAINT. 

As to their Stoa the Athenians ran, 
Or Eome to hear her Statins. You rush on ; 
And, in the middle of the jeering press, 
He, smeared with mud and yellow yolks is, 
Giving the law, like Zeno or Zamolxis. 



109 



^n^hoA^'^ (Sritir, 



Keen, brilliant, shallow, with a ready phrase 

To fit occasion, and a happy knack 

Of adaptation, w4iere he most did lack, 

And witty too, and wise in several ways ; 

As knowing where to choose, and where to skip 

'* Passwords of inspiration " on his lip, 

He takes the wall ; and now may well surprise 

Those who remember him five lustrums back, — 

A ferret-headed boy with purry eyes. 

Behold the Scholar now, the Judge profound ! 

Yet, feeling with his foot precarious ground, 

He stands to fly, or, with a borrowed jest, 

To blink the question when too closely pressed. 

Reproof in praise, and friendship in his frown, 

Have we not seen him, talking calmly down 



no 

On some proud spirit ; letting light illapse 
On him, poor votary of the book and pen, 
Every-ways his superior ; perhaps 
A mighty Poet, before common men 
Ashamed ? But view our Critic ! mark his eye 
Exhaustive, nose would snuff the violet dry 
Of odour, and a brow to whelm the world. 
In his right hand a written leaf is twirled ; 
Before, a landscape spreads ; and there jou see, 
Skii-ting the sky, low scrub and topping tree. 
Beside him stands a youth with bended eyes, 
(Waiting the word until the Master rise,) 
With blushing brow, less confident than cowed : 
Perhaps his poem in his hand he brought ; 
Or a late letter from some lord of thought, 
Like a rich gem, half-grudgingly he shows ; 
Of which a young man might full well be proud 
So cordial, sweet, and friendly to the close, 
With not one vacant word of cant or chaff. 
"Yes, yes," the Master says, " an autograph ! 
And surely to be prized ; for such things sell : 
And, for your poem, 'tis a clever thing." 



anybody's critic. ill 

Then turning the poor pages carelessly, 

As taking in the whole with half an eye, 

He said, " The worth of such 'tis hard to tell : 

If Art inspire us, 'tis in vain we sing ; 

If love of Nature merely, 'tis not well ; 

And personal themes have little good or harm : 

For in these bustling days, when critics swarm, 

No man can stand aside, without rebuke, 

To prate of bubbling brooks, and uplands grassy ; 

Like the Pied Piper in the Burgelostrasse, 

'Twill set the rats a-running." Then with a look, 

A look that took the beauty from the grass, 

And damped the blue, he let the subject pass 

For other themes ; glancing at. Heaven knows what ! 

The farm, the camp, the forum, Pitt and Burke ; 

And in his confidential, friendly phrase 

Weighed that, he Imew the other valued not, 

Or plainly lacked ; and of his life's best work 

Spoke easily, with depreciating praise. 



112 



11 h ^ t ni A a. 



In tlie golden reign of Charlemaign the king, 

The three and thirtieth year, or thereabout, 

Young Eginardus, bred about the court, 

(Left mother-naked at a postern-door,) 

Had thence by slow degrees ascended up ; — 

First page, then pensioner, lastly the king's knight 

And secretary : yet held these steps for naught 

Save as they led him to the Princess' feet, 

Eldest and loveliest of the regal three. 

Most gracious too, and liable to love : 

For Bertha was betrothed ; and she, the third, 

Giselia, would not look upon a man. 

So, bending his whole heart unto this end. 

He watched and waited, trusting to stir to fire 



KHOTRUDA. 113 

The indolent interest in those large eyes, 

And feel the languid hands beat in his own, 

Ere the new spring. And well he played his part ; 

Slipping no chance to bribe, or brush aside. 

All that would stand between him and the hght ; 

Making fast foes in sooth, but feeble friends. 

But what cared he, w4io had read of ladies' love, 

And how young Launcelot gained his Guenovere ; 

A foundling too, or of uncertain strain ? 

And when one morning, coming from the bath, 

He crossed the Princess on the palace-stair. 

And kissed her there in her sweet disarray, 

Nor met the death he dreamed of, in her eyes, — 

He knew himself a hero of old romance ; 

Not seconding, but surpassing, what had been. 

And so they loved ; if that tumultuous pain 

Be love, — disquietude of deep delight, 

And sharpest sadness ; nor, though he knew her 

heart 
His very own, — gained on the instant too. 
And like a waterfall that at one leap 



1 14 EHOTRUDA. 

Plunges from pines to palms, — sliattered at once 
To wreaths of mist, and broken spray bows bright, 
He loved not less, nor wearied of her smiles ; 
But through the daytime held aloof and strange 
His walk ; minghng with knightly mirth and game ; 
Solicitous but to avoid alone 
Aught that might make against him in her mind ; 
Yet strong in this, — that, let the world have end, 
He had pledged his own, and held Ehotruda's 
troth. 

But Love, who had led these lovers thus along, 
Played them a trick one windy night and cold : 
For Eginardus, as his wont had been, 
Crossing the quadrangle, and under dark, — 
No faint moonshine, nor sign of any star, — 
Seeking the Princess' door, such welcome found. 
The knight forgot his prudence in his love ; 
For lying at her feet, her hands in his, 
And telling tales of knightship and emprise, 
And ringing war ; while up the smooth white arm 
His fingers slid insatiable of touch, 



RHOTRUDA. 115 

The night grew old : still of the hero- deeds 
That he had seen, he spoke ; and bitter blows 
Where all the land seemed driven into dust ! 
Beneath fair Pavia's wall, where Loup beat down 
The Longobard, and Charlemaign laid on, 
Cleaving horse and rider ; then, for dusty drought 
Of the fierce tale, he drew her lips to his. 
And silence locked the lovers fast and long, 
Till the great bell crashed One into their dream. 

The castle-bell ! and Eginard not away ! 
With tremulous haste she led him to the door, 
When, lo ! the courtyard white with fallen snow. 
While clear the night hung over it with stars. 
A dozen steps, scarce that, to his own door : 
A dozen steps ? a gulf impassable ! 
What to be done ? Their secret must not lie 
Bare to the sneering eye with the first light ; 
She could not have his footsteps at her door ! 
Discovery and destruction were at hand : 
And, with the thought, they kissed, and kissed 
again ; 

8—2 



IIG RHOTRUDA. 

When suddenly the lady, bending, drew 
Her lover towards her half-unwillingly, 
And on her shoulders fairly took him there, — 
Who held his breath to lighten all his weight, — 
And lightly carried him the courtyard's length 
To his own door ; then, like a frightened hare. 
Fled back in her own tracks unto her bower. 
To pant awhile, and rest that all was safe. 

But Charlemaign the king, who had risen by night 

To look upon memorials, or at ease 

To read and sign an ordinance of the realm, — 

The Fanolehen, or Cunigosteura 

For tithing corn, so to confirm the same 

And stamp it with the pommel of his sword, — 

Hearing their voices in the court below. 

Looked from his window, and beheld the pair. 

Angry, the king ; yet laughing half to view 
The strangeness and vagary of the feat ; 
Laughing indeed ! with twenty minds to call 
From his inner bed-chamber the Forty forth. 



RHOTRUDA. 117 

Who watched all night beside their monarch's bed, 
With naked swords and torches in their hands, 
And test this lover' s-knot with steel and fire ; 
But with a thought, " To-morrow yet will serve 
To greet these mummers," softly the window closed. 
And so went back to his corn-tax again. 

But, with the morn, the king a meeting called 

Of all his lords, courtiers and kindred too. 

And squire and dame, — in the great Audience 

Hall 
Gathered; where sat the king, with the high 

crown 
Upon his brow ; beneath a drapery 
That fell around him like a cataract ! 
With flecks of colour crossed and cancellate ; 
And over this, like trees about a stream, 
Rich carven-work, heavy with wreath and rose. 
Palm and palmirah, fruit and frondage, hung. 

And more the high Hall held of rare and strange ; 

For on the king's right hand Leoena bowed 



1 1 8 ehotruda: 

In cloudlike marble, and beside her crouched 

The tongueless lioness ; on the other side, 

And poising this, the second Sappho stood, — 

Young Erexcea, with her head discrowned, 

The anadema on the horn of her lyre ; 

And by the walls there hung in sequence long 

Merlin himself, and Uterpendragon, 

With all their mighty deeds ; down to the day 

When all the world seemed lost in wreck and 

rout, 
A wrath of crashing steeds and men ; and, in 
The broken battle fighting hopelessly. 
King Arthur, with the ten wounds on his head ! 

But not to gaze on these, appeared the peers. 
Stern looked the king, and, when the court was 

met, — 
The lady and her lover in the midst, — 
Spoke to his lords, demanding them of this : 
What merits he, the servant of the king. 
Forgetful of his place, his trust, his oath. 
Who, for his own bad end, to hide his fault, 



RHOTRUDA. 119 

Makes use of her, a Princess of the realm, 
As of a mule ; — a beast of burden ! — borne 
Upon her shoulders through the winter's night, 
And wind and snow? "Death ! " said the angry 

lords ; 
And knight and squire and minion murmured, 

" Death ! " 
Not one discordant voice. But Charlemaign — 
Though to his foes a circulating sword, 
Yet, as a king, mild, gracious, exorable, 
Blest in his children too, with but one born 
To vex his flesh like an ingrowing nail — 
Looked kindly on the trembling pair, and said : 
'* Yes, Eginardus, well hast thou deserved 
Death for this thing; for, hadst thou loved her 

so, 
Thou shouldst have sought her Father's will in 

this, — 
Protector and disposer of his child, — 
And asked her hand of him, her lord and thine. 
Thy life is forfeit here ; but take it, thou ! — 
Take even two lives for this forfeit one ; 



120 RHOTRUDA. 

And thy fair portress — wed her ; honour God, 
Love one another, and ohey the king." 

Thus far the legend ; but of Khotrude's smile, 
Or of the lords' applause, as truly they 
Would have applauded their first judgment too, 
We nothing learn : yet still the story lives ; 
Shines like a light across those dark old days. 
Wonderful glimpse of woman's wit and love ; 
And worthy to be chronicled with hers 
Who to her lover dear threw down her hair, 
When all the garden glanced with angry blades ! 
Or like a picture framed in battle-pikes 
And bristling swords, it hangs before our view ; — 
The palace -court white with the fallen snow. 
The good king leaning out into the night. 
And Rhotruda bearing Eginard on her back. 



121 



6 a It it U ^. 



Pale water-flowers ! 
That quiver in the quick turn of the brook ; 

And thou, dim nook, — 
Dimmer in twilight, — call again to me 
Visions of life and glory that were ours 
When first she led me here, young CoraHe ! 



No longer blest, 
Yet standing here in silence, may not we 

Fancy or feign 
That little flowers do fall about thy rest. 
In silver mist and tender-dropping rain, 
And that thy world is peace, loved Coralie ? 



122 CORALIE. 

Our friendships flee ; 
And, darkening all things with her mighty shade, 

Comes Misery. 
No longer look the faces that we see, 
With the old eyes ; and Woe itself shall fade, 
Nor even this he left us, Coralie ! 



Feelings and fears, 
That once were ours, have perished in the mould, 

And grief is cold : 
Hearts may be dead to grief; and if our tears 
Are failing or forgetful, there will be 
Mourners about thy bed, lost Coralie ! 



The brook-flowers shine, 
And a faint song the falling water has. 

But not for thee ; 
The dull night weepeth, and the sorrowing pine 
Drops his dead hair upon thy young grave-grass, 

My Coralie ! my Coralie ! 



123 



I TOOK from its glass a flower, 
To lay on her grave with dull accusing tears ; 
But the heart of the flower fell out as I handled 

the rose, 
And my heart is shattered, and soon will wither away. 

I watch the changing shadows, 
And the patch of wdndy sunshine upon the hill, 
And the long blue woods ; and a grief no tongue 

can tell. 
Breaks at my eyes in drops of bitter rain. 

I hear her baby- wagon, 
And the little wheels go over my heart : [return ? 
Oh ! when will the light of the darkened house 
Oh ! when will she come who made the hills so fair ? 

I sit by the parlour-window 
When twilight deepens, and winds get cold without ; 
But the blessed feet no more come up the walk. 
And my little girl and I cry softly together. 



124 



Ji5 sontulimc^ in a (^ravL 



As sometimes in a grove at morning-chime, 

To hit his humour, 
The poet lies alone, and trifles time, — 

A slow consumer ; 
While terebinthine tears the dark trees shed, 

Balsamic, grument ; 
And pine-straws fall into his breast, or spread 

A sere red strewment ; 



As come dark motions of the memory, 

Which no denial 
Can wholly chase away ; nor may we see, 

In faint espial, 



AS SOMETIMES IN A GROVE. 125 

The features of tliat doubt we brood upon 

"With dull persistence, 
As in broad noon our recollections run 

To pre -existence ; 

As when a man, lost on a prairie-plain 

When day is fleeting, 
Looks on the glory, and then turns again, 

His steps repeating, 
And knows not if he draws his comrades nigher. 

Nor where their camp is. 
Yet turns once more to "vdew those walls of fire 

And chrysolampis : 

So idleness, and phantasy, and fear, 

As with dim grandeur [here 

The night comes crowned, seem his who wanders 

In rhyme a ranger ; 
Seem his, who once has seen his morning go. 

Nor dreamed it mattered ; 
Mysterious Noon ; and, when the night comes, lo ! 

A life well-scattered — 



126 AS SOMETIMES IN A GROVE. 

Is all behind ; and howling wastes before : 

Oh that some warmer 
Imagination might those deeps explore, 

And turn informer ! 
In the old track we paddle on, and way, 

Nor can forego it ; 
Or up behind that horseman of the day, 

A modern poet. 

We mount ; uncertain where we may arrive, 

Or what w^e trust to ; 
Unknowing where, indeed, our friend may drive 

His Pegasus to : 
Now reining daintily by stream and sward 

In managed canter ; 
Now plunging on, thro' brick and beam and board. 

Like a Levanter ! * 

Yet ever running on the earth his course. 

And sometimes into ; 
Chasing false fire, we fare from bad to worse ; 

With such a din too — 



AS SOMETIMES IN A GROVE. 127 

As this that now awakes your grief and ire. 

Reader or rider — 
Of halting verse ; till in the Muse's mire 

We sink beside her. 

Oh ! in this day of light, must he, then, lie 

In darkness Stygian, 
Who for his friend may choose Philosophy, 

Reason, Religion, 
And find, tho' late, that creeds of good men prove 

No form or fable ; 
But stand on God's broad justice, and his love 

Unalterable ? 

Must he then, fail, because his j^outh went wide ? 

Oh ! hard endeavour 
To gather grain from the marred mountain-side ; 

Or to dissever 
The lip from its old draught : we tilt the cup, 

And drug reflection ; 
Or juggle with the soul, and so patch up 

A peace or paction ; 



128 AS SOMETIMES IN A GROVE. 

Would carry heaven with half our sins on board : 

Or, blending thickly 
Earth's grosser sweet with that, to our reward 

Would mount up quickly ; 
Heady to find, when this has dimmed and shrunk, 

A more di\dne land, 
And lightly, as a sailor climbs a trunk 

In some dark pine-land. 

Truly a treasure in a hollow tree 

Is golden honey, 
Breathing of mountain-dew, clean fragrancy, 

And uplands sunny ; 
But who, amid a thousand men or youth, 

Landward or seabred, 
Would choose his honey bitter in the mouth 

With bark and bee-bread ? 

No ! though the wish to join that harping choir 

May oft assail us. 
We scarce shall find vague doubt, or half-desire 

Will aught avail us ; 



AS SOMETIMES IN A GROVE. 129 

Nor fullest trust that firmest faith can get, 

Cold fear supplanting ; 
There may be blue and better blue, and yet 

Our part be wanting. 

Alas ! the bosom-sin, that haunts the breast, 

"We pet and pension ; 
Or let the foolish deed still co-exist 

With fair intention. 
From some temptation, where we did not dare, 

We turn regretful ; 
Yet think " the De\dl finds his empty snare," 

Not by a netful ! 

conscience, coward conscience ! teasing so 

Priest, lawyer, statist, 
Thou art a cheat, and may be likened to 

Least things or greatest ; 
A rocking-stone poised on a lonely tower 

In pastures hilly ; 
Or like an anther of that garden-flower, 

The tiger-lily ; 

9 



130 AS SOMETIMES IN A GROVE. 

Stirred at a breath : or stern to break and check 

All winds of heaven ; 
While toward some devil's-dance we crane the neck, 

And sigh un shriven ; 
Or lightly follow where our leaders go 

With pipe and tambour, 
Chafing our follies till they fragrant grow, 

And like rubbed amber. 

Yet, for these things, not godlike seems the creed 

To crush the creature, 
Nor Christly sure ; but shows it like indeed 

A pulpit preacher — 
To fling a pebble in a pond, and roar 

" There ! sink or swim, stone ; 
Get safe to land with all your ballast, or 

Black fire and brimstone ! " 

Ah ! in a world with joy and sorrow torn, 

No life is sweeter 
Than his, just starting in his journey's morn ; 

And seems it bitter 



AS SOMETIMES IN A GROVE. 131 

To give up all things for the pilgrim's staff, 

And garment scanty ; [laugh, 

The moonlight- walk, the dream, the dance, the 
And fair Bhodanthe ! 

And must it be, when but to him, in truth. 

Whom it concerneth, 
The spirit speaks ? Yet to the tender tooth 

The tongue still turneth. 
And he, who proudly walks through life, and hears 

Paean and plaudit, 
Looks ever to the end with doubts and fears, 

And that last audit. 

But, as we sometimes see before the dawn. 

With motion gentle, 
Across the lifeless landscape softly drawn 

A misty mantle ; 
Up from the river to the bluffs away. 

The low land blurring, 
All dim and still, and in the broken gray 

Some faint stars stirring : 



132 AS SOMETIMES IN A GROVE. 

So, when the shadow falls across our eyes, 

And interveneth 
A veil 'twixt us, and all we know and prize ; 

Then, in the zenith, [scure, 

May heaven's lone lights not pass in wreaths ob- 

But, still sojourning 
Amid the cloud, appoint us to the pure 

And perfect morning ! 

And even here, — when stretching wide our hands, 

Longing and leaning. 
To find, *mid jarring aims and fierce demands. 

Our strength and meaning ; 
Though troubled to its depths the spirit heaves, 

Though dim despairing, — 
May we not find Life's mesh of wreck and leaves 

Pale pearls insnaring ? 

Yes : — as the waters cast upon the land 

Loose dulse and laver. 
And where the sea beats in, befringe the sand 

With v.ild sea- slaver ; — 



AS SOMETIMES IN A GROVE. 133 

For currents lift the laden and the light, 

Ground- swell and breaker ; 
Not weedy trash alone, but corallite, 

Jasper, and nacre. 

And though at times the tempter sacks our souls, 

And fiends usurp us, 
Let us still press for right, as ocean rolls, 

With power and purpose ; 
Returning still, though backward flung and foiled, 

To higher station. 
So to work out, distained and sorely soiled, 

Our own salvation. 

Nor following Folly's lamp, nor Learning's lore, 

But, humbly falling 
Before our Father and our Friend, implore 

Our gift and calling. 
Outside the vineyard we have wandered long 

In storm and winter : 
Oh ! guide the grasping hands, the footsteps wrong, 

And bid us enter — 



134 AS SOMETIMES IN A GROVE. 

Ere the clay draw to dark ; nor heave and prize 

With strength unable, 
Nor range a world for wisdom's fruit, that lies 

On our own table. 
So shall we find each movement an advance, 

Each hour momentous, 
If but, in our own place and circumstance, 

Thou, God, content us. 



135 



Of one who went to do deliberate wrong ; 
Not driven by want, nor hard necessity. 
Nor seemingly impelled by hidden hands 
As some have said ; nor hounded on by hate, 
Imperious anger, nor the lust of gold, 
This story tells. Yet all of these coUeagued 
To drive him at the last ; who in young life, 
Ere the bone hardens, or the blood grows cold. 
When youth is prompt to change, even momently, 
With every whiff of wind, or word of chance, — 
Through heat and cold, for many a month and day 
Went calmly to his purpose with still feet ; 
No break-neck speed, but fearfully, and as one 
Who holds liis horse together down a hill. 

Bethiah, or, as those who loved her loved 
To call her. Bertha, for her beauty's sake, — 



136 MARK ATHERTON. 

Bethiah Westbrooke was a forest-flower, 
That trembled forth on the waste woods and swamps 
Of wild New England, in the wild dark days 
Of witchcraft, and of Indian wiles and war. 
Yet something after this ; for oft at night, 
When Westbrooke's cottage was a beacon-star 
To many a beating heart, and suitors came 
From far with gifts and game, then the old man, 
^^Tio felt the fire, and had a gust to talk, 
Would tell of Philip's war and Sassacus ; 
And how De Rouville crossed the crusted snow 
Toward doomed Deerfield in the winter's morn, — 
With a quick rush and halt alternately, 
As 'twere the empty rushing of the wind. 
So to delude the outposts ; how by night, 
About the lonely blockhouse and the mount, 
The scouting Indian hovered like a wolf, 
Seeking a crevice to thrust in the fire ; 
Till the dumb creatures of the barn and field 
Would give swift notice of the stealing foe ; 
Cows, horses, snuffed the war-paint ; and, in the 
house, 



MARK ATHERTON. 137 

How the dog whimpered with erected hair, 
And, Hke the wind in a window, wawled the cat. 
Of these, and personal scapes, would Westbrooke 

speak 
As of the past : " For now," he said, "the tribes, 
Shot, scalped, and scattered, flee on every side ; 
Their bark-boats staved and sunk, their lodges 

burned. 
And plantings, and even the lands that grew them, 

seized, 
They scarce can draw to head. The Indian war 
Was ended ; save that, perhaps, in the long nights, 
From some lone farm outljdng, a fire might rise, 
Set on by the wild savage with a shriek ! 
For squads were here and there ; and still 'twas 

said. 
That in the North some stragglers held together ; 
But mainly broken now ; nor seemed it best 
To mull and^rind them into very dust." 

And then the old man, turning, as he talked, 
Towards his daughter, bitterly would speak 



138 MARK ATHERTON. 

Of that most hateful sin of treacher}- ; 

False friendliness, and that domestic treason, 

Wherein the red man, trustless, merciless, 

Is better than the white ; then, pausing long, 

Would gaze upon Bethiah where she sat, 

Till the girl winced, and on her forehead stood 

The impatient colour ; and Mark, Mark Atherton, 

Into his dark avoiding eye would seem 

To call a clear look, till the old man's fell. 

Not lovers these, though long-accounted friends ; 

And, though the voice went that they two would 

wed. 
Not lovers sure : yet the youth had her ear 
And ready laughter ; for he well could speak 
Smooth words, but with an edge of meaning in 

them. 
Like a sharp acid sheathed in milk or oil. 
Others, too, held aloof; but yet the maid 
Heard not, or, hearing, heard with a half-heart ; 
For still another stood between the two, — 
Companion of the twilights and the dawns 
Of parted days ; one who had loved her then 



MAEK ATHERTON. 139 

With true-intending love, — his hope, his star, 
And almost mistress ! And so the maiden looked 
On this and this, with a divided eye. 

Into the forest rode Mark Atherton. 

Leaving the settlement at the river-side. 

By felling and burnt-over land he passed, and 

plunged 
Thro' towering fern and thickset, till he reached 
The open pines ; and onward still he rode ; 
Climbing the slippery slope, and clattering down 
The stony hollow. From his horse's hoof 
The shy frog flew ; and, like a streak of light, 
The squirrel darted up the mossy bole, 
Where, glancing upward, downward, and across. 
Hammered and hung the crested popinjay. 

So sharply on he rode : now brooding on 
His purpose, which was in truth to win the maid. 
Wrong her rich love, and sell her to the chiefs 
That lurked with their red warriors in the shade; 
Now on her beauty with a grain of ruth, 



140 MARK ATHERTON. 

Their long-time friendship, and that marriage-vow 
Which his heart hated : for he thought of one, 
Once the heart's idol of his hoyish dream, 
That hardly heaven seemed fitted to enshrine ; 
Now pent within a house just bigger than 
A martin-box, that seemed, and scarce as clean, — 
The fair slight girl that was, — ''And see her now! 
A dozen children at her gown-tail pull, 
As so a slut as ere went down-at-heel ! " 

So, hardening his heart, he drew his rein 

Against the bank, and sought the water-side ; 

Parting the laurel to behold thy face, 

New England's Stream, cold River of the Pines ! 

There lay and listened till the twilight fell ; 

When, weary of the flutter of the leaf, 

The dipping of the ripple on the rock. 

And plaintive calling of the phcebe-bird, 

He chanted, half-in-fear, half mockingly : — 

" The river-sides are high, are high, the night is dark ! 
And fair white hands are drawing at our bark : 



MARK ATHERTON. 141 

To-night, to-night, the winds obey our call, 
And the still, dark river sucks like a waterfall, 
As downstream in the dug-out on we fare ; 
For the minister's daughter, and deacon's wife are there. 
Paddle away ! 

On either bank, as softly, softly down she plies, 
Remember, remember, that many a landing lies : 
Then fear not the Friend, with whom we have our part ; 
Nor shame to own the love that hideth in the heart ; 
Xor grudge our chiefest chamber to afford. 
When the house is his from sill to saddle-board ; 
Paddle away ! " 



And with the cadence came 
The quick replying plunge of a broad blade ; 
And, hideous in his plaint and peag, with face 
Inflexible of mournful gravity, 
An Indian chieftain, leaping from his boat. 
Stood, like the fiend evoked. But Atherton, 
Whose cheek had whitened like the winter-leaf 
That flickers all day in the whisthng beech, 
Held down his head as for a moment, so 
Recovering his face ; then steadfastly 



142 MARK ATHERTOX. 

Exchanged due greeting with the forest-king, 
And passed they into parley by the stream. 

Red light had parted from the westward verge, 

And night lay black, ere back again and fast 

The horseman fled, a shadow through the shade. 

And now indeed, as if in very truth, 

The river-demons gathered on his track ; 

For, ever as he rode, a woman's shriek 

Seemed to pursue him through the sounding pines ! 

And where he looked, there, was a woman's face, 

With the frothed lip, and nostril edged with blood, 

Relentlessly appealing, as it seemed. 

And, ever as he rode, a ceaseless sound 

Went ringing at his ear like jingling gold ; 

And, like the innumerable chink and chime 

Of the night-crickets hidden in the grass, 

Not to be lost or left ; he gnashed his teeth : 

But even there the forest fell away. 

And on, by burned and blackened stumps and 

shells. 
That mimicked all things horrible and vague, 



MARK ATHERTON. 143 

In the dim glimmer insecure, he sped, 
And gained the pickets of the palisade. 

Another night, and later in the year, 
A youth and maid, in the first edge of dark. 
Stood by the haunted stream, or wandered on ; 
Insensibly approaching in their talk 
A bushy point that jutted from the wood ; — 
Alley and ambuscade of black pitch-pine. 
Various their look : he, lowering in his mood. 
Baffled and broken where his heart was high, 
Strode sullenly ; she, sad, but resolute, 
And pale with her determination ; yet 
I As one who strives to soothe a cureless harm, 
Spoke tenderly, as to an angry friend ; 
j Remembering old affection ere he go. 
" Partings must be," she said ; " but is not this 
A sorrowful leavetaking to our love, — 
To all our friendliness an ill farewell ? " 
A moment more, and while the words were warm. 
Torn from her feet, arms bound, and gagged with 
grass. 



144 MARK ATHERTON. 

They trailed her through the thickets of the wood. 

And all alone stood Atherton, — with him 

The sachem of the riverside and stream ; — 

Keceiving now, what he had had in part, 

All the had wage of his iniquity. 

Then, as if all things now were at an end, 

Released from gift of faith, and entergage. 

They parted silent : one took up the trail, 

The other slowly to the village passed, 

And raised the alarm, and hlew the gathering-horn. 

And headed the wild search. 

With trampling feet 
He led them to the River, where, he said 
They dragged her through the stream, and up the 

hank. 
He following on into its very flow ; 
But his foot slipping in the anchor-ice. 
With wetted gun, and hruised among the stones. 
He saw her, for whose life he risked his own. 
Snatched from his sight : hut darker now the 

night. 
They far hefore, the trail unsure hy day, 



MARK ATHERTON. 145 

What more could be, but gather arms and men, 
And scout abroad, and watch, till morning light ? 

And Westbrooke, the old man without a child, 
Now raging, now in blank and mute despair, 
Kan forth, or stood in helplessness of grief : 
Not now as when he marched with Mosely's 

men 
Against the savage seated in his strength ! 
Wlien, like a sword of fire, with twenty more. 
He fell upon their necks, and drove them in ; 
Or under Winslow, in that desperate day. 
When, beaten off by the red foe intrenched. 
Through battle-smoke he found himself alone 
O'er breastwork and abbatis charging back. 
Gone was his strength ; and, as the days went by, 
Gone seemed his heart. He sought his bed, and 

there 
Seeing but one face, as the days went by. 
Lay motionless, and like a drowning man. 
Who, lying at the bottom of a brook. 
Stares at the sun ; till, small and smaller grown, 

10 



146 MAKE ATHERTON. 

It flickers like a lamp, and then, — goes out ; 
So shrank his hope, so dropped into the dark. 

And days went by, and still no tidings were. 
The smouldered war broke up in fresher flame, 
Killing all hope ; the rangers, ranging back 
Through all the Massachusetts, west and north, 
Had swept the woods to farthest Canada, 
And many prisoners ransomed or retook : 
But she, the glory of his life, was gone. 
And yet, one winter morning, ere the sun 
Had crossed the river on his westward march, 
Sudden as was the stroke, the mercy came ; 
And Westbrooke held the daughter of his heart ; 
Wilted and wan, yet still the Forest-Flower ! 
Brought by the party of a friendly tribe. 
Who took her from the chiefs, sick unto death ; 
And nursed her long, and tenderly led her home. 
Nor claimed reward. 

And sudden vengeance broke 
On him, the traitor ; but not by those he had 
wronged ; 



MARK ATHERTON. 147 

Fled on the instant to the cedar-swamps, 
His Indian allies seized and bound him there ; 
And after battle, chafing for their slain, 
There, in the darkness of the cedar-swamp, 
They slowly burned his flesh, and charred his 
bones. 

So, in the old days, God was over all ! 
Vengeance was full, and wrong returned to right ; 
Mercy replied to Love ; the lost was found ; 
And treachery answered so with treachery. 



10—2 



148 



f t ^l nij g. 



Ha"v^ you forgotten that still afternoon, 
How fair the fields were, and the brooks how full ? 
The hills how happy in their hanging green ? 
The fields were green ; and here, in spots and 

holes 
Where the rich rain had settled, greener green. 
We sat beside a window to the south, 
Talking of nothing, or in silence sat. 
Till, weary of the summer-darkened room, 
I in an impulse spoke, you smiled ; and so 
In this consent we wandered forth together 
Across the fields to entertain the time. 

Shall I retrace those steps until we reach 
Again the crossing River ? Yes ; for so 



SIDNEY. 149 

Again I seem to tread those paths with you : 
Here are the garden-beds, the shrubbery, 
And moody murmur of the poising bee ; 
And here the hedge that to the River runs. 
Beside me still you mov'd thro' meadow-flowers ; 
Beside, yet unapproached; cold as a star 
On the morning's purple brink ; and seemingly 
Unconscious of the world beneath your feet. 
Yet as I plucked up handfuls from the grass. 
With here and there a flower, telling their names 
And talking ignorant words of why they were, 
You paused to gather berries from the hedge ; 
And I despaired to reach you with my words. 
Believed you cold, nor wished to find myself 
Calling your face back, and as in a dream 
Lingering about the places where you were ; 
And would not if I might, or so it seemed. 
Attain unto the property of your love : 
Knowing full well that I must soon awake. 
Gaze blankly round, and, with a bottomless sigh, ' 
Relapse into my life ; — the life I knew 
Before I saw your fair hair softly put 



150 SIDNEY. 

From off your temples, and the parted moutli, — 

More beautiful indeed, than any flower, 

Half-open, and expectant of the rain. 

youth and loveliness ! are ye less dear 

Placed at impracticable height, or where 

Not wholly clear, but touched with shades and 

spots 
Of coldness and caprice ? or do such make 
The bright more bright, as sometimes we may see 
In the old pictures ? Is the knight's brow held 
Not noble for its scar ? or she less fair. 
The lady with the lozenge on her lip ? 
So may your very failings grace you more ; 
And I, most foolish in my wisdom, find 
The grapes alone are sour we cannot gain. 
But, Sidney, look ! the Kiver runs below, — 
Dark-channelled Deerfield, here beneath our feet, 
Unfordable, — a natural bar and stay. 
Yet, ere you turn, let us look off together. 
As travellers from a hill ; not separate yet, 
But being to be divided, let us look 
Upon the mountains and the summer sky ; 



SIDNEY. 151 

The meadow with the herd in its green heart ; 

The ripple, and the rye-grass on the bank, 

As what we ne'er may so behold again. 

And, do me right in this, the eye, that saw 

These accidents and adjuncts, could not fail 

To mark you, loveliest of the place and time ; . 

A separate beauty, which was yet akin 

To all soft graces of the earth and sky. 

While wanting naught that human warmth could 

give. 
So, lady, take the bitter from my words : 
Let us go onward now ; and should you prize 
In any way the homage of a heart 
Most desolate of love, that finds in all 
Still the salt taste of tears, receive it here, 
With aught that I can give, or you retain. 
Let me, though turning backward with dim eyes, 
Eecover from the past one golden look, 
Remembering this valley of the stream ; 
And the sweet presence that gave light on all, 
And my injustice, and indeed your scorn, 
Refusing me the half-stripped clover-stalk 



152 SIDNEY. 

Your fingers picked to pieces as we walked. 
Yet, ere we part, take from my lips this wish, — 
Not from my lips alone, from my heart's midst, — 
That your young life may be undimmed with storms, 
Nor the wind beat, nor wild rain lash it out, 
But over change and sorrow rise and ride ! 
Leading o'er all a tranquil, lenient light ; 
And, when your evening comes, around that beam 
No tragic twilight brood, but late and long 
Your crystal beauty linger like a star, — 
Like a pure poignant star in the fleecy pink. 

But give your poet now one perfect flower : 
For here we reach again the garden's bound, — 
Sweet as yourself, and of one lustre too ; 
Let not the red dark bud Damascus yields. 
Nor York-and-Lancaster, nor white, nor yellow, 
But a rose-coloured rose. 



153 



ll^fr i jg^r ium. 



Let them lie, — their day is over ; 

Only night and stillness be : 
Let the slow rain come, and bring 

Brake and star-grass, speedwell, harebell, 
All the fulness of the spring ; 

What reck I of friend and lover ? 
Foe by foe laid lovingly ? 

What are mounds of green earth, either ? 

What, to me, unfriendly bones 
Death hath pacified and won 

To a reconciled patience, 
Though their very graves have run 

In the blending earth together, 
And the spider links the stones ? 



1 54 REFRIGERIUM. 

To the hills I wander, crying, — 

Where we stood in days of old, 
Stood and saw the sunset die ; 

Watched through tears the passing purple,- 
" my darling ! miseiy 

Has been mine ; but thou wert lying 
In a slumber sweet and cold." 



155 



Wlx^ ^U\ S^jgjgajt* 



When buttercups break on each grassy side, 
And the summer-long clover is far and wide, 
And by air-hung crag, and gully dwell 
The raspberry-rose, and the blue bluebell, 

What will he do ? what can he say ? 
WiU the lavish laurel his charges pay ? 
No : but the sun lies warm on the way ; 
And, if to-day will not, to-morrow may ! 

Yet late in the year, when the grass is dry. 
And the grain is all in, and the garden by. 
And on reach of river, and forest through, 
The smoke of the Autumn is brooding blue. 

What will he do ? what can he say 
To the purple swamp, and the hills' array ? 
Naught, but to whisper the adage gay. 
If to-day will not, to-morrow may ! 



156 THE OLD BEGGAR. 

But now, when tlie white drift is hurrying higher, 
And the birch-log sputters Hke fat in the fire, 
And the wind singeth boldly, and in the window 
The weather-glass bubble is buried in snow, 
What will he do ? what can he say ? 
Out ! is it ours to save or to slay ? 
E'en let him go whistle his lesson and lay, 
That, if to-day will not, to-morrow may ! 

Heed not his cry, though you feed of the best, 
And with warmest of feathers have fledged your 

nest; 
From the wind of his garments shrink and scowl ; 
Slap the door in his face, and let him howl ! 
"Wliat will he do ? what can he say ? 
What matter to us, if we preach and pray ; 
Stand him aside for a fairer day ! 
So, if to-day will not, to-morrow may ! 

Alas ! when the daylight is weary to see, 
When the grasshopper's song shall a burthen be, 
When the jar of the cricket is bitter to hear. 
And the hum of the harvest-fly stings the ear, 



THE OLD BEGGAR. 157 

What shall we do ? what can we say- 
When the heart is old, and the head is gray, 
And Grief cometh home like a child to stay, 
And to-day cannot help us, nor morrow may ? 

When we plant with tears, and in sorrow pluck. 
And cometh cross-fortune and evil luck ; 
And the land is cold, and the stiff hands bleed. 
And for harvest we hardly get hack the seed, — 

What can we do ? what shall we say 
If a selfish past we alone survey ? 
Dare we hope from the present a happier ray ? 
Or that, if to-day will not, to-morrow may ? 

Ah, no ! but now reach him the holding hand ; 
Bound his fading strength be an arm and band ; 
Be the wrong of the wretched your trust and task ; 
And when trouble comes home, then do you ask, 
" What can we do ? what shall we say ? " 
Thank God for the good we have done in our day ; 
Be the beggar's burthen our stave and stay ; 
That the cloud may be lifted, with full heart pray ; 
And, if to-day -will not, to-moiTow may. 



158 



|aiil(r to 4pnri[sca*^ 



When weary Summer had laid down her leaves, 
And all the autumn fields were brown and bleak, 
How often did we, wandering cheek to cheek, 
Tread these deserted ways ! On those sad eves, 
You — clinging to my side how fearfully ! — 
Would scarcely dare to speak or breathe aloud ; 
While every gust seemed like a voice to rise. 
And Nature's self to mourn. How often we. 
Low in the westward, where they stood like eyes, 
Saw the Gemelli under brows of cloud ; 
Or, through dim pine-boughs, — now the quick 

tears start, — 
Watched the red beating of the Scorpion's heart. 
While winged with love and fear the hours fled by ! 
stolen hours of danger and delight ! 
* See the " Story of Rimini." 



PAULO TO FRANCESCA. 159 

lamp of erring passion burned to waste ! 

true false heart ! even now I seem to taste 
The bitter of the kisses that you gave. 

You were the traitor, — yes ; and more than I, 
You were the tempter. Ah ! that autumn night, 
Th^ hour that seemed a wavering line to mark 
'Twixt early sunset and determined dark, 
Found us together. Menacing and grave, 
The night sank down ; no lingering gleam allowed, 
But in the west one fiery cupreous cloud. 
Do you remember, desperate in my mood, 
Of all things, of myself, and most of you. 
Half-careless, too, whether the worst were known, 
So that the storm might split on me alone, 

1 laughed to think how far we had got from good ! 
Then, with a quick revulsion, wept to view 

The misery of our lives ! for cruel hands 

Had digged a gulf between, a gulf of sin 

We could not cross, nor dared to plunge within, 

And yet, — as, musing on our fate and fall, 

I spoke as one who surely understands, 

Of that deep peace that had been found by some, 



160 PAULO TO ERANCESCA. 

And good from evil ; reasoning, like Paul, 

Of temperance, judgment, and the life to come ; 

Deeming it better here to weep and fast. 

Than mourn with those who shall mourn at the 

last ; 
And we had wept as ne'er till then before. 
And half-resolved that we would meet no more, — 
In the pine-hollow, under the bare skies, 
While darker yet the Shadow closed and clung, 
You, pausing, turned, (do you remember this ? ) 
With clinging arms, and die-away sweet eyes, 
And kissed me in the mouth, with such a kiss 
As that Apollo gave Cassandra young ; 
Sealing her prophet-lips, alas ! with serpent-tongue. 



161 



W\xi,\x the gim iag. 



When tlie dim day is buried 

Beyond the world's sight, 
Low-lingering, lurid, 

A sorrowful light 
Is left on the hilltops ; 

While bitter winds blow, 
Swept down from those chill tops 

And summits of snow. 
Yet, like a pale crown set, 

The hills wear away 
The gold of the downset 

And dying of day : 
So the Indian beheld it 

Above his black pine, 
Ere the pioneer felled it ; 

Yet, brother of mine, 

11 



162 WHEN THE DIM DAY. 

No more by the river 

You track to the brink 
Snowy marks of the beaver 

The musk-rat and mink 
Are all that is left now ; 

So races depart ; 
And Nature, bereft now, 

Place yieldeth to Art. 



Yes, bridge-pier and building 

Now burden the bank. 
Where the slow sunset, yielding, 

O'er dark forests sank ; 
Nor the red man with cunning 

His net hangeth here 
Where the rapid is running, 

Nor plungeth the spear. 
Yet raftsmen and wrecker 

Subsist by the stream ; 
Here find their exchequer : 

Nor empty, we deem, 



WHEN THE DIM DAY. 163 

Are the boats and the barges 

That softly drop down, 
Bearing burthen and largess 

Of hillside and town. 
But the heart no change knoweth : 

The stream shifts its side ; 
Wind cometh and goeth, 

But sorrows abide. 
The bank breaketh inward ; 

The hills heave and sink : 
Without and withinward, 

All gather or shrink. 
See where, by yon birches, 

The wave rested still ! 
Now the wild water lurches 

And lashes at will ; 
Nor oarsman nor sculler 

Could draw on the tide. 
Though his cheek wore the colour 

Of roses in pride. 
But the depth and the deadness 

Of grief will not flow : 

11—2 



164 WHEN THE DIM DAY. 

sorrow and sadness, 
That this should be so ! 

Though the wave and the earthquake 
May swallow the shore, 

Yet wild sorrow and heart-break 
Will part nevermore ! 



165 



igmn io tli^ Wn^in. 



Tu, Yirgo virginum, 

Flos et maris stella ! 
Lumen gestans hominum,- 

Puritatis cella ! 
Maria, fons yeniae, 

Fons mellis et roris, 
Fons misericordiaB, 

Pincerna dulcoris ! 
Porta regis glorise, 

Omni pulchritudine 
Siderum ornata : 

In polorum culmine 
Regnas coronata ! 



166 



W\yan^Hixon. 



Thou, Virgin of the virgins, 

Star and flower of the sea ! 
Bearing up the Lamp of men, — 

Shrine of purity ! 
Mary, fountain of remission, 

Fountain sweet of honey-dew. 
Fountain of forgiving mercy ; 

Mingler and dispenser, too. 
Of deHghtful sweetness ! 

Gate of splendour's king ; 
In all excellence of beauty 

Stars out-glorying ! 
At the summit of the poles. 

Crowned, thou art reigning. 



167 



P a II jg i t If s . 



I NEITHER plough the field, nor sow, 
Nor hold the spade, nor drive the cart, 

Nor spread the heap, nor hill nor hoe, 
To keep the barren land in heart. 



And tide and term, and full and change, 
Find me at one with ridge and plain ; 

And labour's round, and sorrow's range. 
Press lightly, like regardless rain. 



Pleasure and peril, want and waste. 
Knock at the door with equal stress, 

And flit beyond ; nor aught I taste 
Disrelishing of bitterness. 



168 MARGITES. 

And tide and term, and full and change. 
Crown me no cup with flowers above ; 

Nor reck I of embraces strange, 
Nor honey-month of lawful love. 



The seasons pass upon the mould 
With counter-change of cloud and clear ; 

Occasion sure of heat and cold, 
And all the usage of the year. 



But, leaning from my window, chief 
I mark the Autumn's mellow signs, — 

The frosty air, the yellow leaf. 
The ladder leaning on the vines. 



The maple from his brood of boughs 
Puts northward out a reddening limb ; 

The mist draws faintly round the house ; 
And all the headland heights are dim. 



MAKGITES. 169 

And yet it is the same, as when 
I looked across the chestnut woods, 

And saw the barren landscape then 
O'er the red bunch of lilac-buds : 



And all things seem the same. — 'Tis one, 
To lie in sleep, or toil as they 

Who rise beforetime with the sun, 
And so keep footstep with their day ; 



For aimless oaf, and wiser fool, 

Work to one end by differing deeds ; — 

The weeds rot in the standing pool ; 
The water stagnates in the weeds ; 



And all by waste or warfare falls, 

Has gone to wreck, or crumbling goes. 

Since Nero planned his golden walls, 
Or the Cham Cublai built his house^ 



170 MARGITES. 

But naught I reck of change and fray ; 

Watching the clouds at morning driven, 
The still declension of the day ; 

And, when the moon is just in heaven, 



I walk, unknowing where or why ; 

Or idly lie beneath the pine. 
And bite the dry brown threads, and lie 

And think a life well-lost is mine. 



171 

,^ It n u 1 5. 

PART I. 

I. 

SoMETBiES, when winding slow by brook and 

bower, 
Beating the idle grass, — of what avail, 
I ask, are these dim fancies, cares, and fears ? 
What though from every bank I drew a flower, — 
Bloodroot, king-orchis, or the pearlwort pale, — 
And set it in my verse with thoughtful tears ? 
What would it count, though I should sing my 

death, 
And muse and mourn with as poetic breath 
As, in damp garden walks, the autumn gale 
Sighs o'er the fallen floriage ? What avail 
Is the swan's voice, if all the hearers fail ? 
Or his great flight, that no eye gathereth. 
In the blending blue ? And yet, depending so, 
God were not God, whom knowledge cannot know. 



172 SONNETS. 



n. 



Wherefore, with this belief, held like a blade, — 
Gathering my strength and purpose, fair and slow, 
I wait ; resolved to carry it to the heart 
Of that dark doubt in one collected blow ; 
And stand at guard with spirit undismayed, 
Nor fear the Opposer's anger, arms, or art ; 
When, from a hiding near, behold him start 
With a fresh weapon of my weakness made ; 
And goad me with myself, and urge the attack, 
While I strike short, and still give back and back 
While the foe rages. Then from that disgrace 
He points to where they sit that have won the race. 
Laurel by laurel wreathing, face o'er face. 
And leaves me lower still ; for, ranked in place, 



SONNETS. 173 



III. 



And borne with theirs, my proudest thoughts do seem 
Bald at the best, and dim ; a barren gleam 
Among the immortal stars, and faint and brief 
As north-light flitting in the dreary north. 
" What have thy dreams, — a vague, prospective 

worth ? 
An import imminent ? or dost thou deem 
Thy life so fair, that thou wouldst set it forth 
Before the day ? or art thou wise in grief, 
Has fruitful Sorrow swept thee with her wing ? " 
To-day I heard a sweet voice carolling 
In the wood-land paths, with laugh and careless cry, 
Leading her happy mates. Apart I stept ; 
And, while the laugh and song went lightly by, 
In the wild bushes I sat down and wept. 



174 SONNETS. 



JY. 



NoE looks that backward life so bare to me, 

My later youth, and ways I've wandered through ; 

But touched with innocent grace, — the early bee 

On the maple log, the white-heaped cherry-tree 

That hummed all day in the sun, the April blue ! 

Yet hardly now one ray the Forward hath 

To show where sorrow rests, and rest begins ; 

Although I check my feet, nor walk to wrath 

Through days of crime, and grosser shadowings 

Of evil done in the dark ; but fearfully, 

Mid unfulfilled yet unrelinquished sins 

That hedge me in, and press about my path, 

Like purple-poison flowers of stramony, 

With their dull opiate-breath, and dragon-wings. 



SONNETS. 175 



Y. 



And so the day drops by ; the horizon draws 
The fading sun, and we stand struck in grief ; 
FaiHng to find our haven of relief, — 
Wide of the w^ay, nor sure to turn or pause ; 
And weep to view how fast the splendour wanes, 
And scarcely heed, that yet some share remains 
Of the red after-light, some time to mark, 
Some space between the sundown and the dark. 
But not for him those golden calms succeed. 
Who, while the day is high, and glory reigns, 
Sees it go by, — as the dim Pampas plain, 
Hoary with salt, and gray with bitter weed, 
Sees the vault blacken, feels the dark wind strain. 
Hears the dry thunder roll, and knows no rair. 



176 SONNETS. 



VI. 



Not sometimes, but, to liim that heeds the whole, 

And in the Ample reads his personal page, 

Labouring to reconcile, content, assuage, 

The vexed conditions of his heritage, 

For ever waits an angel at the goal ; 

And ills seem but as food for spirits sage. 

And grief becomes a dim apparelage, 

The weed and wearing of the sacred soul. 

Might I but count, but here, one watchlight spark ! 

But vain, oh vain ! this turning for the light, — 

Vain as a groping hand to rend the dark. 

I call, entangled in the night, — a night 

Of wind and voices ! but the gusty roll 

Is vague, nor comes there cheer of pilotage. 



SONNETS. 177 



VII. 

Dank fens of cedar ; hemlock-branches gray 
With tress , and trail of mosses wringing-wet ; 
Beds of the black pitch-pine in dead leaves set 
Whose wasted red has wasted to white away ; 
Remnants of rain, and droppings of decay, — 
Why hold ye so my heart, nor dimly let 
Through your deep leaves the light of yesterday, 
The faded glimmer of a sunshine set ? 
Is it that in your blindness, shut from strife. 
The bread of tears becomes the bread of life ? 
Far from the roar of day, beneath your boughs 
Fresh griiefs beat tranquilly, and loves and vows 
Grow green in your gray shadows, dearer far 
Even than all lovely lights, and roses, are ? 



12 



178 SONNETS. 



YIII. 

As when, down some broad Kiver droppings we, 

Day after day, behold the assuming shores 

Sink and grow dim, as the great Water-course 

Pushes his banks apart and seeks the sea ; 

Benches of pines, high shelf and balcony, 

To flats of willow and low sycamores 

Subsiding, till, where'er the wave w^e see, 

Himself is his horizon utterly : 

So fades the portion of our early world. 

Still on the ambit hangs the purple air ; 

Yet, while we lean to read the secret there. 

The stream that by green shore-sides splashed and 

purled 
Expands ; the mountains melt to vapors rare. 
And life alone circles out flat and bare. 



SONNETS. 179 



IX. 



Yet wear we on ; the deep light disallowed 
That lit our youth, — in years no longer young, 
We wander silently, and brood among 
Dead graves, and tease the sun-break and the 

cloud 
For import. Were it not better yet to fly. 
To follow those who go before the throng, 
Keasoning from stone to star, and easily 
Exampling this existence ? or shall I — 
Who yield slow reverence where I cannot see, 
And gather gleams, where'er by chance or choice 
My footsteps draw, — though brokenly dispensed, — 
Come into light at last ? or suddenly, 
Struck to the knees like Saul, one arm against 
The overbearing brightness, hear — a Voice ? 

12—2 



180 SONNETS. 



X. 



An upper chamber in a darkened house, 

Where, ere his footsteps reached ripe manhood's 

brink, 
Terror and anguish were his cup to drink, — 
I cannot rid the thought, nor hold it close ; 
But dimly dream upon that man alone ; — 
JNow though the autumn clouds most softly pass ; 
The cricket chides beneath the doorstep stone, 
And greener than the season grows the grass. 
Nor can I drop my lids, nor shade my brows. 
But there he stands beside the lifted sash ; 
And, with a swooning of the heart, I think 
Where the black shingles slope to meet the boughs, 
And — shattered on the roof like smallest snows — 
The tiny petals of the mountain -ash. 



SONNETS. 181 



XI. 



What profits it to me, though here allowed 
Life, sunlight, leisure, if they fail to urge 
Me to due motion, or myself to merge 
With the onward stream, too humble, or too proud ? 
That find myself not with the popular surge 
Washed off and on, or up to higher reefs 
Flung with the foremost, when the rolling crowd 
Hoists like a wave, nor strong to speak aloud ; 
But standing here, gazing on my own griefs. 
Strange household woe, and wounds that bleed and 

smart ; 
With still lips, and an outcry in the heart ! — 
Or now, from day to day, I coldly creep 
By summer farms and fields, by stream and steep. 
Dull, and like one exhausted with deep sleep. 



182 SONNETS. 



XII. 



Tall, stately plants, with spikes and forks of gold, 

Crowd every slope : my heart repeats its cry, — 

A cry for strength, for strength and victory ; 

The will to strive, the courage overbold 

That would have moved me once to turn indeed. 

And level with the dust each lordly weed. 

But now I weep upon my wayside walks, 

And sigh for those fair days, when glorying 

I stood a boy amid the mullein-stalks. 

And dreamed myself like him the Lion-King ; 

There, where his shield shed arrows, and the 

clank V 

Clashed on his helm of battle-axe and brand. 
He pushed the battle backward, rank on rank. 
Fallen in the sword-swing of his stormy hand. 



SONNETS. 183 



xm. 

As one who walks and weeps by alien brine, 
And hears the heavy land-wash break, so I, 
Apart from friends, remote in misery, 
But brood on pain, and find in heaven no sign : 
The lights are strange, and bitter voices by. 
So the doomed sailor, left alone to die. 
Looks sadly seaward at the day's decline. 
And hears his parting comrades' jeers and scoffs ; 
Or sees, through mists that hinder and deform. 
The dewy stars of home, — sees Kegulus shine 
With a hot flicker through the murky damp, 
And setting Sirius twitch and twinge like a lamp 
Slung to the mast-head, in a night of storm. 
Of lonely vessel labouring in the troughs. 



184 SONNETS. 



XIV. 

Not proud of station, nor in worldly pelf 
Immoderately rich, nor rudely gay ; 
Gentle he was, and generous in a way, 
And with a wise direction ruled himself. 
Large Nature spread his table every day ; 
And so he lived, — to all the blasts that woo, 
Eesponsible, as yon long locust spray 
That waves and washes in the windy blue. 
Nor wanted he a power to reach and reap 
From hardest things a consequence and use ; 
And yet this friend of mine, in one small hour 
Fell from himself, and was content to weep 
For eyes love-dark, red lips, and cheeks in hues 
Not red, but rose -dim, like the jacinth-flower ! 



SONNETS. 185 



XV. 



And she, her beauty never made her cold, — 

Young-Oread-Hke, beside the green hill- crest, 

And blissfully obeying Love's behest, 

She turned to him as to a god of old ! 

Her smitten soul with its full strength and spring 

RetaHating his love : unto that breast. 

Ere scarce the arms dared open to infold, 

She gave herself as but a little thing ! 

And now, — to impulse cold, to passion dead, — 

With the wild grief of unperfected years. 

He kissed her hands, her mouth, her hair, her 

head ; 
Gathered her close and closer, to drink up 
The odour of her beauty ; then in tears. 
As for a world, gave from his lips the cup ! 



186 SONNETS. 



XVI. 

Yet Nature, where the thunder leaves its trace 
On the high hemlock pine, or sandstone bank, 
Hating all shock of hue, or contrast rank, 
With some consenting colour heals the place. 
Or o'er it draws her mosses green and dank. 
So gentle Time will bring with tender craft 
Another day, and other greens ingraft 
On the dead soil, so fire-burned now, and blank. 
What we have had, we hold ; and cannot sink 
Remembrance : patience cometh from above. 
And now he breathes apart, to daily drink 
In tears the bitter ashes of his love. 
Yet precious-rich, and a diviner draught 
Than Agria or Artemisia drank ! 



SONNETS. 187 



All men, — the Preacher saith, — whate'er or 

whence 
Their increase, walking thro' this world has heen ; 
Both those that gather out, or after-glean, 
Or hold in simple fee of harvests dense ; 
Or but perhaps a flowerless barren green. 
Barren with spots of sorrel, knot-grass, spurge : — 
See to one end their differing paths converge, 
i\.nd all must render answer, here or hence. 
'' Lo ! Death is at the doors," he crieth, '' with 

blows ! " 
But what to him, unto whose feverish sense 
The stars tick audibly, and the wind's low surge 
In the pine, attended, tolls, and throngs, and grows 
On the dread ear, — a thunder too profound 
For bearing, — a Niagara of sound ! 



188 SONNETS. 



XVIII. 

Perchance his own small field some charge de- 
mands, — 
So full the eternal Choral sohs and swells ; 
But clear away the weeds, although there lurk 
Within the weeds a few dim asphodels, 
Flowers of a former day, how fair ! how fair ! 
And yet behold them not, but to the work. 
Before the short light darken, set thy hands ! 
Nor over the surface dip with easy share, 
But beam-deep, plough and plunge your parallels, 
Breaking in clod and flower ! that so may spring 
From the deep grain a goodlier growth and kind ; 
Unstirred of heats that blast, of frosts that bind. 
Nor swept aside, ere the seed catch, by wing 
Of casual shower, nor any chance of wind. 



SONNETS. 189 



XIX. 

Yet vain, perhaps, the fruits our care applaud : 

If the Fore-fate decree the harvest fat, 

Why should we mind this thing, or matter that, 

To sift the seed, and blow the chaff abroad ? 

But doubt not so the Giver to defraud. 

Who will accuse thy labour : spend, nor slack 

Of thy best strength and sweetness too, till God, 

With a full hand and flowing, pay thee back. 

Behold ! on rolling zone and zodiac 

The spray and scatter of his bounty flung ! 

And what canst thou, to whom no hands belong 

To hasten by one hour the morning's birth ? 

Or stay one planet at his circle hung. 

In the great flight of stars across the earth ? 



190 SONNETS. 



XX. 

Still craves the spirit : never Nature solves 
That yearning which with her first breath began ; 
And, in its blinder instinct, still devolves 
On god or pagod, Manada or man. 
Or, lower yet, brute-service, apes and wolves ! 
By Borneo's surf, the bare Barbarian 
Still to the sands beneath him bows to pray : 
Give Greek his god, the Bheel his devil-sway ; 
And what remains to me, who count no odds 
Between such Lord and him I saw to-day, — 
The farmer mounted on his market-load. 
Bundles of wool, and locks of upland hay ; 
The son of toil, that his own works bestrode, 
And him, Ophion, earliest of the gods ? 



SONNETS. 191 



XXI. 

Fathee, God ! to whom, in happier days, 
My father bade me cry when troubles fall, 
Again I come before thy tribunal, 
Too faint for prayer, and all too bhnd for praise ; 
Yet owning never, through life's dim career, 
The eye that would not see, and reckless ear ; 
Against my head no more thy tempests call ! — 
Refreshing that wild sorrow of the heart, 
And those fierce tears : another morning raise 
Upon this vision, now so dimmed and swoln : 
Guide me, as once, unto thy feet to flee ; 
Claiming no price of labour, place, or part ; 
: And only seek, before thy footstool fall'n. 
Tears in mine eyes, to lift these hands of me ! 



192 SONNETS. 



XXII. 

The morning comes; not slow, with reddening 

gold, 
But wildly driven, w^itli windy shower, and sway 
As though the wind would blow the dark away ! 
Voices of wail, of misery multifold, 
Wake with the light, and its harsh glare obey ; 
And yet I walk betimes this day of spring, 
Still my own private portion reckoning. 
Not to compute, though every tear be told. 
Oh, might I on the gale my sorrow fling ! 
But sweep, sweep on, wild blast ! who bids thee 

stay? 
Across the stormy headlands shriek and sing ; 
And, earlier than the daytime, bring the day 
To pouring eyes, half-quenched with watery sight, 
And breaking hearts that hate the morning light ! 



SONNETS. 193 



XXIII. 

Shall I not see her ? Yes : for one has seen 

Her in her beauty, since we called her dead, — 

One like herself, a fair young mother, led 

By her own lot to feel compassion keen ; 

And unto her last night my Anna came. 

And sat within her arms, and spoke her name, 

" While the old smile," she said, " like starlight 

gleamed : 
And like herself in fair young bloom," she said, 
" Only the white more white, the red more red ; 
And fainter than the mist her pressure seemed." 
And words there were, though vague, yet beautiful, 
Which she who heard them could not tell to me; — 
It is enough ! my Anna did not flee 
To grief or fear, nor lies in slumber dull. 



13 



194 SONNETS. 



XXIV. 

Perhaps a dream ; yet surely truth has beamed 
Oft from the gate of dreams upon the brain ; 
As on yon mountain, black with thunder-rain, 
To-day, through cloudy clefts, the glory streamed. 
Why do men doubt, and balance, and disdain, 
Where she, the gentler spirit, seeks to skim 
Light from the vague, — though thick the shadows 

swim; 
Still counting what she may not all explain, — 
Not to be lost, or lightly disesteemed, — 
Though cloudy of shape it seem, and meaning dim ? 
Did Manoah's wife doubt ere she showed to him 
The angel standing in the golden grain ? 
Had Deborah fear ? or was that Vision vain 
That Actia, Arlotte, and Mandane dreamed ? 



SONNETS. 195 



XXV. 

By this low fire I often sit to woo 

Memory to bring the days for ever done ; 

And call the mountains, where our love begun, 

And the dear happy woodlands dipped in dew ; 

And pore upon the landscape, like a book, 

But cannot find her : or there rise to me 

Grardens and groves in light and shadow outspread : 

Or, on a headland far away, I see 

Men marching slow in orderly review ; 

And bayonets flash, as, wheeling from the sun, 

Bank after rank give fire : or, sad, I look 

On miles of moonlit brine, with many a bed 

Of wave-weed heaving, — there, the wet sands shine, 

And just awash, the low reef lifts its line. 



13—2 



196 SONNETS. 



XXVI. 

For Nature daily through her grand design 
Breathes contradiction where she seems most clear ; 
For I have held of her the gift to hear ; 
And felt, indeed, endowed of sense divine, 
When I have found, hy guarded insight fine, 
Cold April flowers in the green end of June ; 
And thought myself possessed of Nature's ear, 
When, hy the lonely mill-hrook, into mine. 
Seated on slah, or trunk asunder sawn. 
The night-hawk hlew his horn at sunny noon ; 
And in the rainy midnight I have heard 
The ground-sparrow's long twitter from the pine, 
And the cat-hird's silver song, — the wakeful hird 
That to the lighted window sings for dawn. 



SONNETS. 197 



xxvn. 

So, to the mind long brooding but on it — 
A haunting theme for anger, joy, or tears, — 
With ardent eyes, not what we thinli, appears. 
But, hunted home, behold its opposite ! 
Worn Sorrow breaking in disastrous mirth, 
And wild tears wept of laughter, like the drops 
Shook by the trampling thunder to the earth ; 
And each seems either, or but a counterfeit 
Of that it would dissemble : hopes are fears. 
And love is woe. Nor here the discord stops ; 
But through all human life runs the account, — 
Born into pain, and ending bitterly ; 
Yet sweet perchance, between-time, like a fount, 
That rises salt, and freshens to the sea. 



198 SONNETS. 



XXVIII. 

Not the round natural world, not the deep mind, 
The reconcilement holds : the blue abyss 
Collects it not ; our arrows sink amiss ; 
And but in Him may we our import find. 
The agony to know, the grief, the bliss ' 

Of toil, is vain and vain ! clots of the sod 
Gathered in heat and haste, and flung behind 
To blind ourselves and others, — what but this 
Still grasping dust, and sowing toward the wind ? 
No more thy meaning seek, thine anguish plead ; 
But, leaving straining thought, and stammering 

word, 
Across the barren azure pass to God ; 
Shooting the void in silence, like a bird, — 
A bird that shuts his wings for better speed ! 



SONNETS. 199 



PART II. 
I. 



" That boy," — the farmer said, with hazel wand 
Pointing him out, half by the haycock hid, — 
" Though bare sixteen, can work at what he's bid, 
From sun till set, — to cradle, reap, or band." 
I heard the words, but scarce could understand 
Whether they claimed a smile, or give me pain ; 
Or was it aught to me, in that green lane. 
That all day yesterday, the briers amid. 
He held the plough against the jarring land 
Steady, or kept his place among the mowers ; 
Whilst other fingers, sweeping for the flowers, 
Brought from the forest back a crimson stain ? 
Was it a thorn that touched the flesh ? or did 
The poke -berry spit purple on my hand ? 



200 SONNETS. 



n. 



Nor idle all, though naught he sees in thine — 

But dallying with the day to make it brief ; 

And thinks it braver far to tramp the leaf 

With dog and gun, thro' tamerac, birch, and pine; 

Or lounge the day beneath a tavern-sign ; 

Yet in his labour can I well discern 

Great workings moving, both in his, and mine. 

What though indeed a joyless verse I turn ? 

The flowers are fair, and give their glimmering 

heaps 
To grace her rest. And so to-night I pass 
To that low mound, gone over now with grass, 
And find her stirless still ; whilst overhead 
Creation moveth, and the farm-boy sleeps 
A still strong sleep, till but the east is red. 



SONNETS. 201 



in. 



Yes : though the brine may from the desert deep 

Run itself sweet before it finds the foam, 

Oh ! what for him — the deep heart once a home 

For love and light — is left ? — to walk and weep ; 

Still, with astonished sorrow, watch to keep 

On his dead day : he weeps, and knows his doom, 

Yet standeth stunned ; as one who climbs a steep, 

And dreaming softly of the cottage-room, 

The faces round the porch, the rose in showers, — 

Gains the last height between his heart and it ; 

And, from the windows where his children sleep. 

Sees the red fire fork ; or, later come, 

Finds, where he left his home, a smouldering pit, — 

Blackness and scalding stench, for love and flowers ! 



202 SONNETS. 



IV. 



But Grief finds solace faint in others' ills, 

And but in her own shadow loves to go : 

For her, the mountain-side may flower or flow ; 

Alike to that dull eye, the wild brook fills 

With mist the chasm, or feeds the fields below ; 

Alike the latter rain, with sure return, 

Breaks in the barren pine, or thick distils 

On the pond-lily and the green brook flags, 

Or rises softly up to flood the fern. 

What though the world were water-drowned ? or 

though 
The sun, from his high place descending slow, 
Should over the autumn landscapes brood and burn. 
Till all the vales were tinder, and their crags, 
Apt to the touch of fire, Hephsestian hills ? 



SONNETS. 203 



V. 



No shame dissuades his thought, no scorn despoils 
Of beauty, who, the daily heaven beneath, 
Gathers his bread by run-sides, rocks, and groves. 
He drinks from rivers of a thousand soils ; 
And, where broad Nature blows, he takes his breath : 
For so his thought stands like the things he loves. 
In thunderous purple like Cascadnac peak. 
Or glimpses faint with grass and cinquefoils. 
The friend may listen with a sneering cheek. 
Concede the matter good, and wish good luck ; 
Or plainly say, " Your brain is planet-struck ! " — 
And drop your hoarded thought as vague and vain. 
Like bypast flowers, to redden again in rain. 
Flung to the offal-heap with shard and shuck ! 



204 SONNETS. 



VI. 



No ! cover not the fault. The wise revere 

The judgment of the simple : harshly flow 

The words of counsel ; but the end may show 

Matter and music to the unwilling ear. 

But perfect grief, like love, should cast out fear. 

And, like an o'er-brimmed river, moaning go. 

Yet shrinks it from the senseless chaff and chat 

Of those who smile, and insolently bestow 

Their ignorant praise ; or those who stoop and 

peer 
To pick with sharpened fingers for a flaw ; 
Nor ever touch the quick, nor rub the raw. 
Better than this, were surgery rough as that. 
Which, hammer and chisel in hand, at one sharp 

blow 
Strikes out the wild tooth from a horse's jaw ! 



SONNETS. 205 



YII. 



His heart was in his garden ; but his brain 
"Wandered at will among the fiery stars : 
Bards, heroes, prophets, Homers, Hamilcars, 
With many angels, stood, his eye to gain ; 
The devils, too, were his familiars. 
And yet the cunning florist held his eyes 
Close to the ground, — a tulip-bulb his prize, — 
And talked of tan and bone-dust, cutworms, grubs, 
As though all Nature held no higher strain ; 
Or, if he spoke of Art, he made the theme 
Flow through box-borders, turf, and flower-tubs ; 
Or, like a garden-engine's, steered the stream, — 
Now spouted rainbows to the silent skies ; 
Now kept it flat, and raked the vralks and shrubs. 



206 SONNETS. 



VIII. 

Companions were we in the grove and glen ! 
Through belts of summer wandered hour on hour, 
Ransacking sward and swamp to deck his bower, — 
River, and reservoir of mountain rain ; 
Nor sought for hard-named herb, or plant of power, 
But Whippoorwill-shoe, and quaint Sidesaddle- 
flower. 
And still he talked, asserting, thought is free ; 
And wisest souls by their own action shine : 
'* For beauty," he said, " is seen where'er we look, 
Growing alike in waste and guarded ground ; 
And, hke the May-flower, gathered equally 
On desolate hills, where scantily the pine 
Drops his dry wisps about the barren rock, 
And in the angles of the fences found." 



SONNETS. 207 



IX. 

But unto him came swift calamity, 

In the sweet spring-time, when his beds were 

green ; 
And my heart waited, trustfully serene, 
For the new blossom on my household-tree. 
But flowers, and gods, and quaint Philosophy, 
Are poor, in truth, to fill the empty place ; 
Nor any joy, nor season's jollity. 
Can aught, indeed, avail to grace our grief. 
Can spring return to him a brother's face ? 
I Or bring my darling back to me, — to me ? 
lUndimmed the May went on with bird and bower ; 
The summer filled and faded like a flower : 
But rainy Autumn and the red-turned leaf 
Found us at tears, and wept for company. 



208 SONNETS. 



Thy baby, too, the child that was to be, 

Thro' happier clays, — a brightening sun above, — 

Held to thy heart with more forgetful love, — 

So proud a portion of thyself and me : 

We talked it o'er, — the bliss that was to bless ; 

The birth, the baby robes, the christening. 

And all our hearts were carried in this thing. 

Cold, cold she lies where houseless tempests blow; 

The baby's face is here, almost a woe ; 

And I, so seared in soul, so sapped and shrunk. 

Gaze hopeless, — careless, in my changed estate 

To fall at once, or in the wilderness 

Stand like a charred and fire -hardened trunk, 

To break the axe's edge of Time and Fate ! 



SONNETS. 209 



XI. 



Still pressing through these weeping solitudes, 
Perchance I snatch a beam of comfort bright, — 
And pause, to fix the gleam, or lose it quite. 
That darkens as I move, or but intrudes 
To baffle and forelay : as sometimes here. 
When late at night the wearied engineer 
Driving his engine up through Whately woods. 
Sees on the track a glimmering lantern-hght. 
And checks his crashing speed, — with hasty hand 
Reversing and retarding. But, again ! 
Look where it burns, a fmiong on before ! — 
The witchlight of the reedy river-shore, 
The pilot of the forest and the fen. 
Not to be left, but with the waste woodland. 



14 



210 SONNETS. 



XII. 

How most unworthy, echoing in mine ears, 

The verse sounds on ! — Life, Love, Experience, 

Art, 
Fused into grief; and hke a grief-filled heart, 
Where all emotion tends and turns to tears, 
Broken by its own. strength of passion and need : 
Unworthy, though the bitter waters start 
In these dim eyes, reviewing thought and word ; 
The high desire, the faint accomplished deed ; 
Unuttered love and loss, — and feverish 
Beatings against a gate for ever barred. 
Yet over and again I range and read 
The blotted page, re-turning leaf and leaf ; 
And half-believe the words are what I wish, 
And pore upon my verse, and court my grief, — 



SONNETS. 211 



XIII. 

E^^N as a lover, dreaming, unaware, 

Calls o'er his mistress' features hour by hour. 

Nor thinks of simple dress, and humble dower ; 

But pictures to himself her graces rare, — 

Dark eyes, dark lashes, and harmonious hair 

Caught lightly up with amaryllis flow^er, 

HaBmanthus, eardrop, or auricula : 

And deems mthin wide Nature's bound and la^v 

All to beseem her beauty but designed — 

Of pure or proud ; nor counts himself too bold 

To fit her forehead with the perfect gold ; 

Or round her girlish temples belt and bind 

Some lamp of jewels, lovelier than the whole, — 

Green diamond, or gem of girasol ! 



14—2 



212 SONNETS. 



XIV. 

The breeze is sharp, the sky is hard and blue, — 

Blue with white tails of cloud. On such a day. 

Upon a neck of sand o'erblown with spray, 

We stood in silence the great sea to view ; 

And marked the bathers at their shuddering play 

Run in and out wdth the succeeding wave. 

While from our footsteps broke the trembling turf. 

Again I hear the drenching of the wave ; 

The rocks rise dim, with wall and weedy cave ; 

Her voice is in mine ears, her answer yet : 

Again I see, above the froth and fret, 

The blue loft standing like eternity ! 

And white feet flying from the surging surf 

And simmering' suds of the sea ! 



SONNETS. 213 



XY 



Gertrude and Gulielma, sister-twins, 
Dwelt in the valley, at the farm-house old ; 
Nor grief had touched their locks of dark and gold, 
Nor dimmed the fragrant whiteness of their skins : 
Both heautiful, and one in height and mould ; 
Yet one had loveliness which the spirit wins 
To other worlds, — eyes, forehead, smile, and all. 
More softly serious than the twilight's fall. 
The other — can I e'er forget the day. 
When, stealing from a laughing group away. 
To muse with absent eye, and motion slow. 
Her beauty fell upon me like a blow ? — 
Gertrude ! with red flowerlip, and silk black hair ! 
Yet Gulielma was by far more fair ! 



214 SONNETS. 



XVI. 

Under tlie mountain, as when first I knew 
Its low black roof, and chimney creeper-twined. 
The red house stands ; and yet my footsteps find 
Vague in the walks, waste balm and feverfew. 
But they are gone : no soft-eyed sisters trip 
Across the porch or lintels ; where, behind. 
The mother sat, — sat knitting with pursed lip. 
The house stands vacant in its green recess, 
Absent of beauty as a broken heart ; 
The wild rain enters ; and the sunset wind 
Sighs in the chambers of their loveliness, 
Or shakes the pane ; and in the silent noons, 
The glass falls from the window, part by part, 
And ringeth faintly in the grassy stones. 



SONNETS. 215 



xvn. 

Roll on, sad world ! not Mercury or Mars 
Could swifter speed, or slower, round the sun, 
Than in this year of variance thou hast done 
For me. Yet pain, fear, heart-break, w^oes, and wars 
Have natural limit ; from his dread eclipse 
The swift sun hastens, and the night debars 
The day, but to bring in the day more bright ; 
The flowers renew their odorous fellowships ; 
The moon runs round and round ; the slow earth 

dips. 
True to her poise, and lifts : the planet-stars 
Roll and return from circle to ellipse ; 
The day is dull and soft, the eave-trough drips ; 
And yet I know the splendour of the light 
Will break anon : look ! where the gray is white ! 



216 SONNETS. 



XYIII. 

And Change, with hurried hand, has swept these 

scenes : 
The woods have fallen ; across the meadow-lot 
The hunter's trail and trap -path is forgot ; 
And fire has drunk the swamps of evergreens ! 
Yet for a moment let my fancy plant 
These autumn hills again, — the wild dove's haunt. 
The wild deer's walk. In golden umbrage shut, 
The Indian river runs, Quonecktacut ! 
Here, but a lifetime back, where falls to-night 
Behind the curtained pane a sheltered light 
On buds of rose, or vase of violet 
Aloft upon the marble mantel set, — 
Here, in the forest-heart, hung blackening 
The wolf-bait on the bush beside the spring. 



SONNETS. 217 



XIX. 

And faces, forms, and phantoms, numbered not, 
Gather and pass like mist upon the breeze ; 
Jading the eye with uncouth images, — 
Women with muskets, children dropping shot ; 
By fields half-harvested, or left, in fear 
Of Indian inroad, or the Hessian near ; 
Disaster, poverty, and dire disease. 
Or from the burning village, through the trees, 
I see the smoke in reddening volumes roll ; 
The Indian file in shadowy silence pass. 
While the last man sets up the trampled grass ; 
The Tory priest declaiming, fierce and fat ; 
The Shay's-man, with the green branch in his hat 
Or silent sagamore, Shaug, or Wassahoale ! 



218 SO^'NETS. 



XX. 



HARD endeavour, to blend in with these — 

Deep shadings of the past, a deeper grief ; 

Or blur with stranger woes a wound so chief, — 

Though the great world turn slow with agonies ! 

What though the forest wind-flowers fell and died, 

And Gertrude sleeps at Gulielma's side ? 

The}^ have their tears, nor turn to us their eyes : 

But we pursue our dead with groans, and cries, 

And bitter reclamations, to the term 

Of undiscerning darkness and the worm ; 

Then sit in silence down, and brooding dwell. 

Through the slow years, on all we loved, and tell 

Each tone, each look of love, each syllable. 

With lips that work, with eyes that overwell ! 



SONNETS. 219 



XXI. 

Last night I dreamed we parted once again ; 

That all was over. From the outward shore, 

I saw a dark bark lessen more and more, 

That bore her from me o'er the boundless main ; 

And yeai'ned to follow : no sense of mystery 

Fell on me, nor the old fear of the sea ; 

Only I thought, " Knowledge must bring relief ; " — 

Nor feared the sunless gulfs, the tempest's breath, 

Nor drowning, nor the bitterness of death ! 

Yet while, as one who sees his hope decay. 

And scarcely weeping, vacant in my grief, 

I on the jetty stood, and watched the ship, — 

The wave broke fresher, flinging on my lip 

Some drops of salt : I shuddered, and turned away. 



220 SONNETS. 



XXII. 

Put off thy bark from shore, tho' near the night ; 
And, leaving home, and friends, and hope, behind, — 
Sail down the lights ! Thou scarce canst fail to find, 
desolate one ! the morning breaking white ; 
Some shore of rest beyond the labouring wave : 
Ah ! 'tis for this I mourn : too long I have 
Wandered in tears along Life's stormy way, 
Where, day to day, no haven or hope reveals. 
Yet on the bound my weary sight I keep. 
As one who sails, a landsman on the deep. 
And, longing for the land, day after day 
Sees the horizon rise and fall, and feels 
His heart die out, — still riding restlessly 
Between the sailing cloud, and the seasick sea. 



SONNETS. 221 



XXIII. 

Some truths may pierce the spirit's deeper gloom, 

Yet shine unapprehended : grand, remote, 

We bow before their strength, yet feel them not ; 

When some low promise of the life to come. 

Blessing the mourner, holds the heart indeed, 

A leading lamp that all may reach and read ! 

Nor reck those lights, so distant over us. 

Sublime, but helpless to the spirit's need 

As the night-stars in heaven's vault ! yet, thus. 

Though the great asterisms mount and burn 

In inaccessible glory, — this, its height 

Has reached ; but lingers on till light return. 

Low in the sky, like frosty Sirius, 

To snap and sparkle through the winter's night. 



222 SONNETS. 



XXIV. 

Each common object, too, — the house, the grove, 
The street, the face, the ware in the window, — seems 
Alien and sad, the wreck of perished dreams ; 
Painfully present, yet remote in love. 
The day goes down in rain, the winds blow wide. 
I leave the town ; I climb the mountain- side, 
Striving from stumps and stones to wring rehef ; 
And in the senseless anger of my grief, 
I rave and weep ; I roar to the unmoved skies ; 
But the wild tempest carries away my cries ! — 
Then back I turn to hide my face in sleep. 
Again with dawn the same dull round to sweep, 
And buy, and sell, and prate, and laugh, and chide, 
As if she had not lived, or had not died. 



SONNETS. 223 



XXY. 

Small gossip, whispering at the window-pane, 
Finds reason still, for aught beneath the sun : 
Answers itself ere answer shall be none, 
And in the personal field delights to reign, — 
IMeting to this, his grief ; to that, his gain ; 
And busy to detract, to head or hang ! 
Oh ! wiser far, for him who lieth hid 
Within himself, — secure, like him to stay, 
Icesius' son ; who, when the city rang, 
Knew there was news abroad, nor wondered what !- 
If these conspire, why should I counterplot ? 
Or vex my heart with guessing whether or not 
John went to church, or what my neighbour did 
The day before, day before yesterday ? 



224 SONNETS. 



XXVJ. 

Yet from indifference may we hope for peace ? 
Or in inaction lose the sense of pain ? 
Joyless I stand, with vacant heart and brain, 
And scarce would turn the hand, to be, or cease. 
No onward purpose in my life seems plain : 
To-day may end it, or to-morrow will ; 
Life still to be preserved, though worthless still, 
A tear-dimmed face glassed in a gilded locket. 
But Conscience, starting, with a reddening cheek, 
Loud on the ear her homely message sends ! 
''Ere the sun plunge, determine ; up ! awake ! 
And for thy sordid being make amends : 
Truth is not found by feeling in the pocket. 
Nor Wisdom sucked from out the fingers' end ! " 



SONNETS. 225 



XXVII. 

But the heart murmurs at so harsh a tone 



So sunk m tears it lies, so gone in grief, 

With its own blood 'twould venture, far more lief, 

Than underprize one drop of Sorrow's own, 

Or grudge one hour of mournful idleness. 

To idle time indeed, to moan our moan. 

And then go shivering from a folded gate, — 

Broken in heart and life, exheredate 

Of all we loved ! Yet some, from dire distress, 

Accounting tears no loss, and grief no crime. 

Have gleaned up gold, and made their walk 

sublime : 
So he, poor wanderer in steps like theirs. 
May find his griefs, though it must be with tears, 
Gold grit and grail, washed from the sands of Time. 

15 



226 SONNETS. 



XXVIII. 

Yet sometimes, with the sad respectant mind, 
We look upon lost hours of want and wail, 
As on a picture, with contentment pale ; 
And even the present seems with voices kind 
To soothe our sorrow, and the past endears : 
Or like a sick man's happy trance appears, 
When on the first soft waves of Slumber's calm ; 
And like a wreck that has outlived the gale, — 
No longer lifted by the wrenching billow. 
He rides at rest ; while from the distant dam, 
Dim and far off, as in a dream, he hears 
The pulsing hammer play, — or the vague wind 
Rising and falling in tlie wayside willow ; 
Or the faint rustling of the watch beneath his 
pillow. 



SONNETS. 227 



XXIX. 

How oft in schoolboy-days, from the school's sway 
Have I run forth to Nature as to a friend, — 
With some pretext of o'erwrought sight, to spend 
My school-time in green meadows far away ! 
Careless of summoning hell, or clocks that strike, 
I marked with flowers the minutes of my day : 
For still the eye that shrank from hated hours, 
Dazzled with decimal and dividend. 
Knew each bleached alder-root that plashed across 
The bubbling brook, and every mass of moss ; 
Could tell the month, too, by the vervain- spike, — 
How far the ring of purple tiny flowers 
Had climbed ; just starting, may-be, vnth the May, 
Half -high, or tapering off at Summer's end. 



15—2 



228 SONNETS. 



XXX. 

Yet, even mid merry boyhood's tricks and scapes, 
Early my heart a deeper lesson learnt ; 
Wandering alone by many a mile of burnt 
Black woodside, that but the snow-flake decks and 

drapes. 
And I have stood beneath Canadian sky, 
In utter solitudes, where the cricket's cry 
Appals the heart, and fear takes visible shapes ; 
And on Long Island's void and isolate capes 
Heard the sea break like iron bars : and still. 
In all, I seemed to hear the same deep dirge ; 
Borne in the wind, the insect's tiny trill. 
And crash and jangle of the shaking surge ; 
And knew not what they meant, — prophetic woe ? 
Dim bodings, wherefore ? Now, indeed, I know ! 



SONNETS. 229 



XXXI. 

My Anna ! when for thee my head was bowed, 
The circle of the world, sky, mountain, main. 
Drew inw^ard to one spot ; and now again 
Wide Nature narrows to the shell and shroud. 
In the late dawn they will not be forgot, 
And evenings early-dark, when the low rain 
Begins at nightfaU, though no tempests rave, 
I know the rain is falling on her grave ; 
The morning views it, and the sunset cloud 
Points with a finger to that lonely spot ; 
The crops, that up the valley rolling go. 
Ever towards her slumber bow and blow ! 
I look on the sweeping corn, and the surging rye, 
And with every gust of mnd my heart goes by ! 



230 SONNETS. 



XXXII. 

Oh for the face and footstep ! woods and shores ! 
That looked upon us in life's happiest flush ; 
That saw our figures breaking from the brush ; 
That heard our voices calling through the bowers ! 
How are ye darkened ! Deepest tears upgush 
From the heart's heart ; and, gathering more and 

more, 
Blindness, and strangling tears, — as now before 
Your shades I stand, and find ye still so fair ! 
And thou, sad mountain-stream ! thy stretches steal 
Thro' fern and flag, as when we gathered flowers 
Along thy reeds and shallows cold ; or where — 
Over the red reef, with a rolling roar — 
The woods, thro' glimmering gaps of green, reveal. 
Sideward, the Kiver turning like a wheel. 



SONNETS. 231 



XXXIII. 

One still dark niglit, I sat alone and wrote : 
So still it was, that distant Chanticleer 
Seemed to cry out his warning at my ear, — 
Save for the brooding echo in his throat. 
Sullen I sat ; when, like the night-wind's note, 
A voice said, " Wherefore doth he weep and fear ? 
Doth he not know no cry to God is dumb ? " 
Another spoke: "His heart is dimmed and drowned 
With grief." I knew the shape that bended then 
To kiss me ; when suddenly I once again. 
Across the watches of the starless gloom. 
Heard the cock scream and pause ; the morning 

bell. 
Into the gulfs of Night, dropped One ! the vision 

fell,— 
And left me listening to the sinldng sound. 



232 SONNETS. 



XXXIV. 

My Anna ! though thine earthly steps are done ; 

Nor in the garden, nor heside the door, 

Shall I behold thee standing any more, — 

I would not hide my face from light, nor shun 

The full completion of this worldly day. 

What though heside my feet no other one 

May set her own, to walk the forward way ? 

I will not fear to take the path alone ; 

Loving, for thy sake, things that cheer and bless, - 

Kind words, pure deeds, and gentlest charities. 

Nor will I cease to hold a hope and aim ; 

But, prophet-like, of these will make my bread. 

And feed my soul at peace ; as Esdras fed 

On flowers, until the Vision and the glory came ! 



SONNETS. 233 



XXXV. 

Nor all of solemn is my thouglit of her : 
Though changed and glorified, must there not be 
Place still for mirth, and innocent gayety, 
And pure young hearts ? Or do we gravely err, 
And is their happiness too deep for joy ? 
It cannot be : the natural heart's employ 
Pours praise as pure as any worshipper 
Lost in his rite ; too raptured to be gay ! 
Yes ; and such service in its flight outstrips 
The cries of suffering hearts that wail and bleed. 
The groans of grief, wrung from some bitter need.- 
This is the faith I bear ; and look indeed 
To hear her laugh again, — and feel her lips 
Kiss from my brow the heavy thoughts away. 



234 SONNETS. 



XXXVI. 

Farewell ! farewell, noble heart ! I dreamed 
That Time nor Death could from m^^ ciide divorce 
Thy fair young life, beside whose pure, bright 

course 
My earthly nature stationary seemed ; 
Yet, by companionship, direction took, 
And progress, as the bank runs with the brook. — 
Oh ! round that mould which all thy mortal hath, 
Our children's, and about my own sere path, 
May these dim thoughts not fall as dry and vain, 
But, fruitful as March-dust, or April rain, 
Forerun the green ! foretell the perfect da}^ 
Of restoration, — when, in fields divine, 
And walking as of old, thy hand in mine, 
By the still waters we may softly stray ! 



SONNETS. 235 



As Eponina brought, to move the king, 

In the old day, her children of the tomb. 

Begotten an'^ brought forth in charnel gloom, — 

To plead a father's cause ; so I, too, bring 

Unto thy feet, my Maker, tearfully, 

These offspring of my sorrow ; hidden long, 

And scarcely able to abide the light. 

May their deep cry inaudible, come to Thee, 

Clear, through the cloud of words, the sobs of song. 

And, sharper than that other's, pierce thine ears! 

That so, each thought, aim, utterance, dark or 

bright. 
May find thy pardoning love ; more blest than she 
Who joyful passed with them to death and night, 
With whom she had been buried nine long years ! 

THE END. { 21 July 1864 j 



X49 



ERRATA. 



Page 53, line 15, for "poles" reac? " polls." 

'•' bog-hut " read " log-hut." 

" smiles " read " smile." 

" Rhotruda " read " Rhotrude. 

" plaint " read "paint." 

"Let"7-ea(f "Yet." 

" raftsmen " read " raftsman." 

" splashed " read " plashed." 

« give " read " gave." 

" earthly " read " earthy." 



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